A man can remember a lot of things. The exact day and time of the next Canucks game, the price he paid for his first beer, when it’s time for an oil change, the name of your favourite aunt’s shampoo she used fifty years ago (Fitch Shampoo). Some of these are important and a man has a right to take pride in his memory, were it not for its unwelcomed comparison to that held by his wife.
It is impossible to quantify the number of times I’ve witnessed (and been personally party to) a conversation among friends that goes something like this:
Husband: “Yeah, yeah, it was a pretty good movie. But it wasn’t as good as . . . the other one she made . . . the one with the guy in the sports car and all the fish and . . . just a minute. Dearest Wife, what’s the name of the Julia Roberts movie?”
Wife: “Which one, Dearest Husband? She’s made dozens.”
Husband: “The one with all the fish . . . and the sports--_
Wife: “Mystic Pizza.”
Husband: “Yeah, well like I was saying.”
How does this happen? Women remember movies, actors, actresses, books, characters in books, relative’s birthdays—even of relatives on the other side of the country you only see at family reunions, the essential elements of their month’s horoscope, the name of their best friend’s hairdresser, let alone their own.
Psychologists Agneta Herlitz and Jenny Rehnman offer specific test results that indicate that women excelled in verbal episodic memory tasks, such as remembering words, objects, pictures or everyday events such as the location of car keys.
The puzzling thing about all of this is if you examine the staff of the History Department at the University of Victoria, for example, you will find almost all of them are male. Are we all missing something here?
I once asked my wife about this phenomenon and she gave me her answer. It will come to me, eventually.
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