Memory of Memories

In my last year at university, sitting in my room revising for finals, with my boyfriend (now my husband), also revising, I was visited by a post-graduate student doing psychology. He asked me if I would like to take part in a memory project he was working on for his PhD, and he even offered to pay me. He explained that he would leave a list of items for me to look at and memorise and he would return after 20 minutes to "test" me on these items. As soon as he left the room, I had the feeling that I had seen him somewhere before, quite a few years earlier, and was racking my brains as to where. So, while I was concentrating on his list, my mind was going into overdrive trying to remember. Eventually it dawned on me. I waited until Jim's return (name of student), we went through the test, he told me I had an excellent memory, and then I asked him what he could remember of a boat trip he had made, from Harwich to Hoek of Holland six years earlier, in order to meet up with his German penpal who was due to meet him off the boat - he looked at me totally blankly I remember, and asked me how I could possibly have known about that trip. I knew because we had got into conversation during that trip, and spent most of the five hours or so together, just talking. Interestingly, he claimed he would never have recognised me, although he did remember talking to a girl at the time! For his project then he asked me everything I could remember - I could recall exactly what I was wearing, what he had been wearing, what the subject of conversation was, what he was studying etc etc. It really was quite an experience - eventually he knew who I was, and he began to recall what I had been studying too. He mentioned that he had changed considerably since that boat trip (filled out a bit, now wearing glasses, grown a beard, much longer hair) and wondered how I could possibly have recognised him - I told him it was the way the saliva collected in the corner of his mouth - how powerful the mind can be!