The memory should be specially taxed in youth, since it is then that it is strongest and most tenacious.  But in choosing the things that should be committed to memory the utmost care and forethought must be exercised; as lessons well learnt in youth are never forgotten.

I was sulking about just this thing a bit this morning, when I was struggling to finish my Spanish homework.  I often wish that I had learned a second language when I was a child.  I know that my grandparents always regretted that I couldn't speak Cantonese with them, and wished I lived closer so that they could teach me.  Spanish, French, Italian, German...I don't think it would have mattered what language I learned, because simply having that experience of thinking in multiple languages and switching back and forth between them sure would have made it a lot easier to pick up other tongues later in life.

Instead, today I can remember the details of insipid, stupid stories I read in elementary school but the details of the lives of artists I studied at SJSU and wrote endless papers about have gone completely fuzzy.  Dopey song lyrics can be recalled with relative ease, but Spanish vocabulary escapes me a day or two after studying it.

So annoying.  So frustrating!
It makes me feel old.