Do you have a memory like an elephant or a sieve?

Today's English
September 17th, 2017

Memory matters a lot!  How will you work in your office, how will you remember your mother, wife and children and how will you come back home if your memory is deleted from you by accident? Whatever is yours is not yours if memory bids farewell to you. What about your current memory? If you can remember well even the names, numbers, incidents in the remote past, you “have a memory like an elephant."  If you are having a poor memory, it can be said in English that you “have a memory like a sieve.”

1.My son has a memory like an elephant but I don't.
2.She has a memory like a sieve and it is very dangerous to assign this work to her.

People generally remember significant events of a person's life at his death or at his retirement.  If you rejoice at the happy moments of your life or somebody's life, any one of the following three expressions can be used: “stroll down memory lane", “take a walk down memory lane" and “take a trip down memory lane.”

1.How was your date with her? We spent the whole day in Ooty and walked down memory lane for a long time. (=talked about past happy moments)
2.The fine weather aroused our feelings and emotions and we took a trip down memory lane.

Who will forget the most beautiful moments in life? If you preserve such sweet moments or touching people in your memory, it means that “you freeze them in your memory.”  When you talk about where you kept something or what you actually did in the past, you can use the expression “if my memory serves me right" that is equal to “if I remember correctly.” The events you think to have happened may not have really happened, then it's a “false memory".

1.She was such a beautiful lady and I froze her in my memory.
2.Who would lose this wonderful sight? Let me freeze it right now.
3.If my memory serves me right, he came here last Monday, around 5 o' clock in the evening.

“Our memory is a more perfect world than the universe: it gives back life to those who no longer exist.”
-Guy de Maupassant