Funny How Our Brain Works

So yesterday was the 25th, which means.. payday! so naturallly, I logged in to my online banking to check my new balance. By now I’ve logged in so many times that i’ve pretty much memorized my 16 digit ATM card, so I just nonchalantly punched it in like I would usually do.

It failed to authenticate. “Odd”, i thought, and pulled out my ATM card to double check.

It turns out that I got the first 4 digit wrong. However the number I punched in still rings a bell somewhere, in a cloudy distant memory. Then i had an idea and thought to check my old ATM card, which I hadn’t used or even looked at since over a year ago after I left the states but still kept b/c it has a cute hello kitty design that I’m rather fond of.

And sure enough, the four digit I got wrong was the first four digit of my old ATM card. I wonder how that works? If you had asked me randomly what my old ATM card number was, I wouldn’t even know where to begin.

I wonder… do we assign memories and label them as “to be forgotten” and store them somewhere? (don’t kill me if that’s scientifically incorrect). during that tiny split second when i tried to log in to my online banking, my brain must have had a slight error and accessed a part of my brain where I store old memories…

How long would it be before our brain permanently discard the said memory?