"It was my personal aide de memoire."
This is a total signaling effort - that he seized on this at some point in his life as an effective phrase. There is nothing wrong with being low class or not that smart, but there IS something wrong with hiding it by signaling that you are not low class or not that smart. It's just ... low class and not that smart.
Comey often signals his insecurity with these phrases - he thinks the elite use them, he wishes he were elite, and he pretends he is.
It's a little like people using 'whom' as the subject of a verb, thinking the mere tacking on of the 'm' makes them high brow. It may even be effective among their peers, but it marks them as a faker since they don't know when to use it.
I can say all this without being snotty because first of all it's true, and second of all, low/high class, smart/not-smart don't really matter and don't really exist. Certainly they have little bearing experiencing a good life helping others to do the same.
This guy ... he's just ... so very lame. He is as tragic as he thinks he is great, and even in thinking he is great, he believes it is partially because he is so humble.
He's a GREAT study in man's ability to lie to himself semi consciously - to cast himself in an illusory story where he is a hero and all of what look like misdeeds and character flaws to the unwashed, if one knew the real conditions - as Comey often says "well what I was thinking at the time," are exceptions that prove the rule or extreme circumstances emphasizing the nuance with which a truly moral person must deal, often choosing the apparent (to the un-morally-washed) wrong action which is actually the right action.
Much better to just be a dumb humble schmuck trudging through reality. But no, Comey at some young age cast himself in a tale that explained his insecurities and made him ... a great man!
Probably bullied as a kid because he was the string bean.
Born in Yonkers moved to Allendale.....bet he never fit in. Went to second tier schools. Still trying to be like them. Best way to do that is to be morally superior all the while cheating on every value you might have had