Memory

I am always worried about losing my memory. So I specially went to get another external hard disk to back up all my electronic files (diary, photos etc), except that it doesn't seem to be working.

Apparently I have a good memory (it's not something you notice until someone tells you, like colour-blindness). I tend to remember random stuff, like my whole family's ID card numbers, people's dates of birth etc. Losing my memory, or the ability to remember, would make me quite a different person.

Ironically enough, my earliest memory is quite an embarrassing one. I started going to nursery when I was two. There I was repeatedly bitten by the girl sitting next to me, who evidently was having a lot of teething problems. I never told anyone about it until recently. I thought then it was part of going to nursery - you sing songs, you play games, you get bitten by The Girl Next To You. In my memory I never bit back, but I do remember those teeth marks, and wanting to cry every time I got bitten. How my mum didn't notice I don't know.

An example of me suffering in silence perhaps. But it wasn't The Girl Next To Me's fault, nor my teacher's, nor my mum's. I could only attribute this to me being dumb. But how would a two-year-old know that you are not supposed to be bitten? I religiously obeyed my mum's 'listen to your teacher' and my teacher's 'don't make any noise'. They never asked whether I was bitten by The Girl Next To Me so I never lied.

It's only when I became less dumb that I realised a two-year-old should never be bitten, no matter who by. So apart from warning all mums with young children the possibility of your darling being bitten, what have I learnt?

• I was a dumb child, and I probably still am
• People (or at least I) don't complain unless they know they could be treated better. At 2 years old we had little Knowledge of Good and Evil. TGNTM did not know biting people was wrong; I did not know being bitten was not part of going to nursery. In adult's wise eyes we were probably doing something very silly. We were just children.
  
  Centuries of slavery, discrimination, inequality lasted that long probably because people suffering didn't know they weren't born to be like that, and they could stand up for themselves. The actual matter is probably more complicated, but if only one has the hindsight, or better still, wisdom in seeing what is to come, would fairness have come earlier?

Sometimes I wonder whether even we as adults have full Knowledge of Good and Evil. I think not. So in what ways now have we been suffering in silence or mistreating each other?