I can still remember what I had for breakfast this morning, that’s easy enough. Just don’t ask me about what I had yesterday because I remember zilch. That and down to last week’s will take a lot more effort because at best, I might just be able to recall a meal or two. The only exception of course, would be if we were at a special occasion because that would be an extra. Perhaps that is probably why I’m pretty much like those people who like to take food pics. Not to merely prop them online, mind you. It’s just I can’t remember things.
A teacher once told us long ago, people only choose to retain whatever information they need for the moment. This is probably why some knowledge stay with us for a long time (such as passwords, phone numbers, etc.) while others, we tend to forget as soon as we decide we had no use for them anymore. I’ve taken that lesson he told us long ago as gospel truth even as I’ve never heard it again from other people or read it as serious study in the years ahead. (So, perhaps for another time, my being gullible might be another article.) Anyway, I use this as justification for my forgetfulness because, who needs to know what I had last night for dinner anyway?
But back to remembering things, you might have experienced putting your keys in one place and then forgetting where you put them a minute later. That’s a close cousin to desperately looking for your reading glasses only to discover it’s neatly propped on top of your head all along. So, for years now, since I have noticed I was starting to have these amusing occurrences, I tried to come up with a system whereby I would vocalize where I place things and then in my head, associate it with rhyming words, as though in a song. I would also make a check list of things to do or bring with me and then tick on each as a pilot would before take-off. Whenever I leave the house or any venue, I use this. I meticulously check all I brought with me and later stuff them in one bag for easy storage. The procedure comes in handy say, during gig night and I’m a little with too much to drink, I enumerate in my head all I took out of the bag earlier (picks, capo and harps) and put them back in, oftentimes including my wallet and whatever else is there in my pockets.
In all, these might just as well be the least serious of memory loss. Atm, I’m beginning to be hard at remembering names so that ala-political aspirant, I just smile away. If it looks like I’m deep in concentration listening to your every word, that’s because I really am. Deep in concentration trying to remember your first name. As to the why of this predicament I am in at the moment, let’s just go back to what I had for dinner last night.
