My daughter has never seen a movie or a commercial. But she quotes them all the time.

My daughter Georgina is a profoundly disabled 6 year old. She’s non verbal, she’s not ambulatory, and she suffers from severe seizures. She can’t move any part of her body besides her hands and fingers. But, she’s also the most angelic, loving, bright little girl I have ever encountered.<br><br>She’s never watched TV. She’s never seen a commercial.<br><br>But, she quotes them.<br><br>When we take her outside to play, she’ll say (out loud) “sometimes you feel like a nut… sometimes you don’t.”<br><br>Or, “pardon me, sir, but you’re parked on my curly fries.” This one always comes with a giggle.<br><br>She’ll say things like “I am serious… and don’t call me Shirley.” And, “you’re gonna need a bigger boat.”<br><br>But, the weirdest one is this: “are you not entertained? Are you not entertained? Well… *are you*?”<br><br>It always comes out of the blue. Usually after one of her seizures.<br><br>She says it in a voice that’s not hers. Like, it’s Georgina’s voice, but it’s so deep and so serious and nothing like how she usually talks.<br><br>It took us a while to figure out what she was saying. The first time my wife heard her talking like that, she thought she was saying “I wanna get married” or “I wanna get a burger.” <br><br>My wife wasn’t sure so, she wrote down what she thought my daughter was saying, then audibly read it out loud to Georgina to see if she would react. But, Georgina didn’t react.<br><br>That is, until my wife had read out every phrase she’d written down. And, after she’d read the last phrase, my daughter said the phrase out loud, then giggled.<br><br>So, at first, we thought Georgina was simply mimicking words she’d heard.<br><br>But, then she started saying full sentences. Like, “I can’t believe i had sex with Demi Moore.”<br><br>Then, long passages like, “I have a map of the world… actual size… and it goes to scale. It says on the corner… ‘You are here’.”<br><br>She’s never heard those words before. She’s never heard of the movies or TV shows. But, she quotes them verbatim. And, she only quotes from things that *are* movies or TV shows. It’s a very specific pattern of speech that’s not just her mimicking things she’s heard.<br><br>Except, she hasn’t heard those things. There’s just something about her brain that makes her talk that way. But, it’s not just words. It’s full sentences. It’s quotes.<br><br>The best theory we have is that she somehow has hyperthymesia.<br><br>Hyperthymesia is a disorder where a person has an overdeveloped episodic memory. It’s a condition where a person will remember… everything. And, for my daughter, that means a sort of strange, cosmic recall of *everyones* episodic memories.<br><br>That’s why she’s always quoting movies and shows. Because she remembers watching them, even if she’s never actually watched them. But, that also means she remembers having lived inside the mind of a glorified serial killer who watched gladiators fight each other to death.<br><br>When she says “are you not entertained?” I have no idea what she’s really saying. But, from the context of the seizures and the hyperthymesia, I have an exuciatingly horrific idea.<br><br>It’s like her brain is an old radio, and it’s experienced the memories of *every* radio listener who ever listened to a broadcast of a gladiatorial games.<br><br>Her brain is broken. It’s a receiver that can't tune a station. And, we can't help but experienced the strange things that it’s picking up. But, it's not our memories. It's not our experiences.<br><br>It's just broken. It's just busted. It's just a radio that can’t tune a station. But, we still love her, unconditionally. Even though she’ll never be “normal,” even though she’ll never be whole.<br><br>I have a map of her brain… actual size…. and it goes to scale. It says on the corner…. “you are here.”<br><br>[Edit:]<br><br>Georgina passed away on Friday, the 17th of February. She was six. She’ll always be missed.