Most of us can remember where we were and what we were doing when big events occurred in our lives. Those memorable moments stick with us for decades. What’s frustrating is that I can recall so many of those “where was I” moments, even as I can’t remember what happened to the 12-pack of batteries I bought last month. I was so sure I put them somewhere.

It’s as if our brain has its own self-activating AI system, recording the important events in history, scraping our memory to match up our life with those events, then storing it away for recall because AI knows what we will want to remember. I guess the data servers in my head figured the batteries weren’t worth the trouble.

I remember the day in 1963 when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. I was in health class — that’s what we called the one day a week we sat in chairs instead of running around in gym class — when the teacher interrupted the lesson to share the sad news. She was crying.

I remember watching TV in the basement of the college dorm in the fall of 1968 when Republican candidate for president Richard Nixon and Democratic candidate Hubert Humphrey appeared on the screen. I remember someone throwing a beer can at the TV. But I can’t remember whether he — it had to be a he, as women were not allowed in the dorm — was aiming at one of the candidates in particular, or just wanted to change the channel to a football game.

Six years later, when Nixon resigned as president in disgrace in 1974, a college friend and I figured we couldn’t celebrate alone, so we knocked unannounced on another Chicago friend’s door and invited ourselves inside.

I remember being stuck by weather in the Sitka airport, eating pie, of course, watching on the TV as the Chicago Bears suffered the only defeat of their near-perfect 1985 season. The pie was excellent; the disappointment was hard to swallow.

I can remember what I was doing at work the day my dad called to say mom had fallen down and cracked her hip while they were on vacation in Italy, and then a couple of years later when mom called to say dad had collapsed at the Hong Kong airport. My job both times was to get them home.

My dad died on Halloween night, 2010. I was sitting on the front step of my apartment in Washington, D.C., almost out of candy, when the hospital called.

Of course I know where I was on 9/11 — watching the morning news on TV at my home in Juneau, thinking when I saw the second plane hit the tower that the station must be rerunning the video of the first attack.

In 2016, when the Chicago Cubs won the World Series, I was at the Kenai airport, watching the final inning on the TV in the waiting area. I had just landed, thinking when I left Anchorage that the Cubs had lost, only to arrive in Kenai and discover that a rain delay had bought me time to see the last inning and its happy ending.

I kind of like recalling not just the history but the images in my mind of where I was and what I was doing. It makes it all more real.

Though I never expect to find those lost batteries, I appreciate that my mind keeps the rest of my life on a data server for recall.