Mr. Unforgettable

“I will never forget Your precepts, for by them You have given me life.” [Psalm 119:93]

When Kim Peek was born in 1951, his parents knew he was different. He had an enlarged head, and tests revealed that his left and right brain hemispheres were not separated like most people, forming a great single “data storage” area. Kim’s motor skills and physical development proved slow, and he did not walk until age four. But early on his parents noticed other remarkable abilities. By 20 months Kim was able to memorize every book that was read to him. By age three Kim was reading the dictionary. Since that time until his death in 2009, Kim had read and could clearly recall over 12,000 books!

Peek was called a “mega-savant” because his photographic memory made him a virtual genius in about 15 different subjects. Known as “Kimputer” to many, his vast knowledge included: world and American history, British monarchs, Bible history, geography (he was acquainted with all main roads and highways in the U.S. and Canada), professional sports statistics (for baseball, basketball, football, Kentucky Derby winners, etc.), the history of the space program, movies and music themes, the complete works of Shakespeare, telephone area codes, major zip codes, and all TV stations and their markets. He could identify most classical music compositions and tell the date the music was written and the composer’s birth date and place of birth and death. He especially enjoyed calendar calculations. If you told him your birth date, he would tell you the day of the week you were born and what the day of the week will be when you turn 65 so you can retire.

Kim struggled with simple tasks like dressing and shaving himself or finding the silverware drawer at home. Still, it was his encyclopedic memory that became the inspiration for the 1988 Oscar-winning movie Rain Man, portrayed by Dustin Hoffman. In his later life, when home in Utah, Kim spent afternoons at the Salt Lake City Public Library poring over books, even memorizing phone books. It only took him about eight seconds to read an average page and he read two pages at a time – one with his left eye the other with his right.

If you had a photographic memory, what would you want to remember? King David provides the perfect answer in today’s Bible text. What could be more important than to keep in mind all of God’s law. David also wrote: “Your word I have hidden in my heart, that I might not sin against You” (Psalm 119:11).