I had the enormous pleasure of taking my daughters to see Taylor Swift over the weekend, and I’m still basking in the joy of it. The tickets were the kids’ sole holiday gift, and we’ve been counting down the days—literally: with a whiteboard on our kitchen counter—for months. We spent so many hours planning and bedazzling our outfits, listing and debating our favorite songs, and eagerly anticipating the event that the tickets felt fully worth their (absurd) cost even before the concert. We hit a major snag four days before the big night when our third-party seller canceled our tickets. Completely panicked at the idea of letting our kids down, we battled to hold the resale site accountable for replacement tickets. Though the angst of that experience was awful, it somehow made the show even sweeter, as did being surrounded by thousands of people who were elated to be there. My younger daughter exchanged friendship bracelets with strangers, and the older one dropped her teen inhibitions and sang and danced her heart out. I wish I could live in that moment, and I’ll remember it forever. But apparently that’s unusual, as Angela Haupt reports for TIME in her article “Why You Can’t Remember That Taylor Swift Concert All Too Well.” She asked experts about a weird phenomenon Taylor Swift fans are reporting. After spending all that money on tickets, they can’t seem to remember the show. The psychological reason behind it? They were just too excited. As noted by Robert Kraft—a professor of cognitive psychology at Otterbein University, in Westerville, Ohio—forgetting isn’t necessarily bad. “Not remembering is actually a tribute to being in the moment and enjoying it.” I’m grateful I managed both to enjoy the magical moment and to engrave it on my memory. The fact that my screenagers took video of almost the entire event helps, too. Have you experienced this phenomenon of forgetting something you were excited about? Tell me, at andrea@time.com. Best,
Andrea | 
