YOU MUST REMEMBER THIS

 

You've heard of the age of reason.  (Begins somewhere around age 7.)

And the age of consent.  (Varies from state to state.) 

Well, it would appear that I have reached the age of forgetting.  (Let’s put this one at over age 60.)  

Sure, I passed 60 some time ago, but I have only recently reached the point where I can't deny that I have reached the age of forgetting, of losing things.  

At least once each day, I lose my phone.  It's not really lost.  I know it's somewhere in my house. I just can't remember where.  Same with my earbuds – they walk off regularly.  (It is possible they are partying with the  socks that never emerge from the dryer with their partners.)

It wasn’t always so.  When my daughters were young, one or another of them would ask, “Where are my shoes?’ or “Where did I put my book?” or would shriek, “I can’t find my homework!”  I would pause and do what I called “the vision thing,” (thank you George H. W. Bush), and promptly respond, “Behind the big chair” or "On the table” or “Check your bedroom floor.”  I knew where everything was.

Sigh.

And then there is the issue of forgetting words.  Again, it's more losing than forgetting.  The words are in my brain somewhere. They generally return after hovering tantalizingly close to the surface of my mind for seconds or minutes or, occasionally, hours before emerging.  I have learned that it is counterproductive to try to force the word to make an appearance.  This only causes it to burrow more deeply into my brain.  But if I wait and pretend I don't care, it will eventually step out of its hiding place – usually without any warning. This can lead to some awkward exchanges  I might be talking with someone about, say, the weather when I startle that someone by suddenly and irrelevantly declaring, "japonica" or whatever word I had lost earlier in the day and suddenly remembered. 

  

image by absolutvision

(Is it a good sign that I know I have forgotten a word?  It would be worse, I suppose, if the word were so far lost that I didn't know I had ever made its acquaintance.) 

A couple of nights ago, while doing an acrostic puzzle,  I asked my husband to remind me of the name of the game with baskets on poles.  “Not jai alai,” I helpfully prompted. “The other one.”  

“Oh, yeah,” said he, and immediately lost the word. 

"The one that has become so popular on college campuses in recent years,”  said I.

He looked at me, stricken. Such a simple word and both of us had temporarily lost it.

Later the same evening, while we were talking about something else entirely, I suddenly cried out, “lacrosse.”  I had forgotten the earlier conversation, but the word jumped out anyway.  He was momentarily startled by my outburst, but we both went to sleep relieved and happy.

I had a similar experience while walking with a friend a week or two ago.  She was telling me about a book (I think -- it is possible that I am not remembering correctly), speaking with her usual easy fluency, when she suddenly lost a word.  "You know what I mean," she said.  "The word for wiping out a whole group of people."

"Oh yes," I said, "It's  . . ." and then I, too, promptly lost the word.  We figured we both knew what she was trying to say, and she went on with sharing her thought until I interrupted her just seconds later to later to cry triumphantly, "genocide!"  Not a word that should be spoken triumphantly, I might add.  (And now I remember, it was the Olympics and the Chinese government, not a book, she was discussing.)

So, does one person forgetting a word drive that word out of a companion’s head as well?  Is this a thing?

 

I wonder.

(It is interesting to me, that I rarely lose a word while writing.  Does this make me like the Alzheimer's patients who can sing, but not talk?)

Here's one that even youngish folk will have experienced - I will walk into into a room and forget what I was after.  Happily, this one is easily remedied by walking back to where I started to reboot my brain.

One more.  I used to have a great memory for conversations.  I still do.  It’s just that I can’t always remember who they were with, which leads to questions such as, “Did I tell you this already,” or “Have we talked about this?” 

On the other hand, I can hear one bar of a song that was popular in my teens or twenties and immediately identify the title and the singer.  The lyrics also flow forth easily as I sing along.

Very useful.

Really, though, this forgetting thing isn’t so bad.  I once read that if you forget where you put your keys, this isn’t a problem, but if you forget what they are for, you’re in trouble.  

So far, so good.