Applied neuroscience hits me on the head

I believe there's a pretty well accepted theory that you never forget anything, that it's all in there somewhere, but the access through the increasing (with age) jumble of synapses makes you appear to forget, because you don't cognitively go where the memory sits.

To make this theory literal, I imagine a bright cursor, maybe looking like pacman moving along those synapse highways.

So here's an experiment you might try. I took whatever first came into my head and let the cursor float to similar memories.

As it happened, the first thing that came to my mind was getting hit in the head:

Hit in the head memory 1:
A softball hit by Mr. Wheeler at Hawthorn Avenue school (sixth grade) went way too far and hit me in the head all the way at the other end of the playground. He felt guilty since a teacher (he was a semi pro football player) shouldn't have been shaggin flies with the kids.

Hit in the head memory 2:
At summer camp I was strolling along in a daze and walked between a counselor and a tree. It happens he was trying to throw (what we used to call) a trench knife into the tree. Luckily when it hit me in the head it was handle first. He was also guilty and scared to death.

Hit in the head memory 3:
Ice skating (illegally) on a pond at Baltusrol Golf Club in Springfield. I was probably 14, and playing ice tag. I desperately wanted to tag Ed ____ my personal nemesis. I totally lost it when I couldn't catch up with him, and without thinking, just dived at him like a football tackle. Unfortunately his skate came up and the back of the blade got me and opened up a flap of skin just between my eyes. Recall, those areas really bleed a lot. A half inch in either direction might have taken out an eye.

Hit in the head memory 4:
In Morgantown I was up a tree with an electric chain saw (is that an oxymoron) and the branch I was cutting above me came off before I expected and whacked me pretty hard on the head, knocking me out of the tree. The lucky thing is I didn't cut myselfwith the saw. I did bleed a lot.

Hit in the head memory 5:
Panther 21 demonstration in NYC approx 1969. Policeman attacks my friend, Lee, with billy club, he's all tangled in a cape (dumb thing to wear to demonstration) so I jump on the policeman's back to pull him off. In his heavy blue coat it took him a while to notice me, but eventually he let go of Lee and took after me. He was swinging away with the club, and I felt like a super hero slowing the picture down. I actually blocked every blow with my (armored with newspaper up my coat sleeves for the demonstration) arms. He eventually gave up. Actually this is a "not hit in the head" story, because he tried and failed. I guess the cursor still found this one with the search terms "hit" and "head." When I saw a doctor later because of swollen and sore arms, he quipped my head was harder and could have taken the blows better. I think he was being literal, but the figurative version makes a better story.

By the way, there are a lot more, but I'll stop.

So what's the point? I don't walk around with a consciousness of those incidents. But when I said hit on head to the cursor, it immediately drug these up.

Take a bath and let the good thoughts flow!