“Memoir is about handing over your life to someone and saying, This is what I went through, this is who I am, and maybe you can learn something from it.” Jeannette Walls, an American writer and journalist.
Memoir simply is a French word for memory. Some just stick in your craw and won’t go away.
I remember a number of such incidents as a self-unaware, college student. I had a lovely, growing relationship with a coed from another school.
She was buoyant and spontaneous. I remember once we ate at a down-home diner and I scarfed an exceedingly, unhealthy, chili dog down my innards in about 3 nanoseconds. On the way out the door she laughed and noted that she could drop some of her table manners with me at times, when, I was so engrossed in the “food race” that I wouldn’t notice.
Then on meeting her parents and dining with them, I was equally ill-mannered. A series of misfires continued. After that school year, I found myself visiting her at a camp where she counseled that summer. Alfie, a movie about an over the top, ill-mannered rogue, was the hit that summer. The woman gave me a detailed account of my similarities to Alfie and that was the end of that.
Those events were attention-grabbing curves in the road. Perhaps, were it not for the lessons of that failed relationship, I would never have become more self-aware and married the love of my life.
Pilgrim on a Long, Long Journey 