The quotidian -- way TOO damned quotidian

I imagine those of us who've been around a while are going to remember today in the same way we remember, say, the Kennedy assassinations, the Apollo 8 moon landing, the day Richard Nixon resigned, the day of the Challenger explosion, and so on.

I'm starting to feel like every detail of an otherwise completely unremarkable day is etched into my mind with laserlike precision. Very little -- none -- of it matters but I know what shirt I almost wore before changing my mind, what time my kids called, and a thousand other minuscule, unrelated details. I remember texting a friend that I'd be showing up for dinner in ratty shorts with dirty hair (she didn't care). 

I have a feeling I'll be able to recall that mental clutter with crystal clarity many years from now, if many years are granted to me, in the same way I can still feel my mother pulling me onto the piano bench to tell me about Senator Kennedy's assassination, the way I can eidetically re-create the tears in my father's eyes at Angel stadium when the announcement came that men had landed on the moon, the way I can still see Mother ironing (and smell the steam and the starch!) as we watched Richard Nixon resign, the way my friend Corbett and I were glued to his bootleg TV in our improvised office watching the horrors of the Challenger disaster. 

Is anyone else having this same reaction? Is the marginal minutia of your day searing itself into your mind? Why does this happen? Are we clinging to ordinary, day-in-the-life stuff because we need to -- because the huge stuff is too overwhelming? Are we in a collective state of shock (not surprise, I'm referring to something akin to medical SHOCK, the real stuff).