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A random memory


Today's random memory takes us back to October 1974, when I turned 16. 

As was then the rite of passage, [maybe not so much now?], Mom and Dad instructed me in a period of weeks on the basics of driving a car. 

My chief memory of this involves the signal lights, and how utterly unperceptive on the subject I had been in my 16 years of life.  Adding up my time in cars would surely have summed to a plural number of those sixteen years.  I might have paid a bit of attention. But I hadn't.

I knew that drivers did something involving a lever that turned on a light telling other drivers where you were turning. I also was sort-of-aware going in that this lever did not have to be used a second time to turn the light back off.

But I suspected there was a timer involved. Signal left, then turn left and after X seconds, the light will go off ... no? 

Oh, wait, you mean there is no timer, the light goes off when and because I turn the wheel the other way?  Who knew? 

One of my great no-shit-Sherlock moments. 
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Comments

  1. HenryAugust 21, 2026 at 7:38 AM

    Freud would have said that no memory is random, so an explanation for why you remembered this at this time exists. Not being a Freudian, I will not suggest that the explanation lies in a childhood sexual desire, but perhaps you recently learned something that you thought you should have known and you free-associated to this earlier experience.

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