Fish for Friday

Limerick of the Week:

We've met before and I really wish I
Were able to think of your name. Pish, I
    Cannot, I'm coming up blank,
    But forgetting has to rank
A catchy topic for today's Fish Fri.!

I racked and racked my brain, but couldn't remember any episodes of forgetfulness.

Since I got my driver’s license my big issue was and continues to be keys! Where did I put them? But I started having that issues when I was 16. I do relate to the “why am I in the kitchen” issue, but usually I remember why quickly. So, I’m probably not ready for prime time when it comes to serious forgetfulness.

I have experienced forgetfulness, but I don't view any of those experiences as particularly significant or interesting. I have had a long-time problem of remembering names of people I meet only occasionally. I attempt to avoid having to remember trivial things (e.g., Where did I leave my house keys? the keys to the rentals? my car keys? Where did I leave this or that item of personal grooming, check books, etc.?) by having a specific location for these kinds things and being dutiful about returning them to those locations when I have finished using them. I do the same with yard tools and other ordinary tools.

On any given day, I have five, ten, or any number of things I'd like to do that day, some of them things that I really ought not fail to do. For years I've written "to do lists," and these have been extremely important in helping me get most of the things done that I wanted to do. Of course, using lists has its own problem. On occasion I forget to look at my list!^*

i was standing at my "____" several years ago, had my hand on it and could NOT remember the word...it was "easel"
    now, when a name or word or movie/theatre/book title wont come up, i give up FAST. i think of my brain as the black "Magic 8-ball" we all had as children in our generation. you asked it a question, then turned over for the "answer" to float up..."never mind" "ask me later"... whatever
    if i wait...the answer will float up in my mind ...later...and it usually does it makes me crazy that others i know sit there and try to find the lost word for several minutes (when i just want them to move on with the story they are telling)
    i think one of the worst sins, particularly as a senior, is boring other people. You have an obligation to be conversational, and entertaining. So you need to avoid hogging the stage and excessive digressions or confusions, so that your story is to the point and moves along.
    One of my dislikes is the old-person's fixation with, while trying to tell you an anecdote, cute event story.. trying to fix upon which day the story happened. The day is rarely important to the story, and the search for it frequently stalls or derails the story. whenever anyone i know begins to enter the "uh, what day was THAT THING..? land" I say, "Uh, it was Tuesday, i always get my haircut on Tuesday," to remind them to GET ON WITH THE STORY, let that detail go, its not CRITICAL TO THE STORY

Forgetfulness? My office was 6 miles from my home, a route I had traveled for 6 years. Going home one evening, I drove a couple of miles and suddenly had no idea where I was or where I was going. I pulled over, sat and cried, out of fear. Total blank for several minutes, maybe 5 minutes. Just as quickly as it happened, it was over. It wasn't long before I was off work for 2 years, a stress leave. As it turned out, the diagnosis was PTSD. Short term memory loss. Scary thing!

My old memory's fine, but I am about as bad as you can be and still breathe. I expect to eventually choose between two assisted-living homes here if the screw-up at David Grant Medical Center at Travis Air Force Base clears up. Trying to figure out what I must take with me and if it will fit is a challenge. I have done too much and hate to throw it all away, but there is very little that I will be able to keep or do anything with. I wish my families would come and take what they want. My kids won't help. My half-sister was thinking about coming to help me for two weeks, but she got a job, so she won't be coming....

As Wavy Gravy said, "If you remember the Sixties, you weren't there."

A couple of decades ago I nearly died from an allergic reaction to a medication, and it left me with some bizarre memory gaps. At times I can remember irrelevant details from the distant past, such as my locker number in 10th grade, while at the same time forgetting more important details, such as when I was born—or much more importantly, when my wife was born.
    The condition has produced some classic moments:
    One day I was standing in a grocery checkout line when I noticed a very attractive, somewhat younger woman looking at me. I smiled and looked away, expecting her to do the same, but when I looked her way again, she just kept staring at me. Slowly it dawned on me: "I know this woman."
    We made it through the lines at about the same time, and as we both headed toward the door, I said hello. The moment she spoke it all came back to me and we stood outside and chatted a few minutes. After the polite "how have you been" questions we figured out we had not seen each other in close to 10 years, so I was shocked to realize I could remember just about everything about her. She seemed flabbergasted as I recalled where and when we used to work together, her husband's name, her dog's name, the car she drove, and even her license plate number.
    When I finished all that I was feeling quite pleased about how my memory was recovering. She seemed not quite so happy. Finally, with her arms crossed and her lips pursed, she said, "do you remember anything else about me? About us?"
    "No I think that's about it," I replied, still happy that more of my synapses were again firing better than I realized. "You tell me, what am I forgetting?"
    "Well," she replied, "how about the three years we dated off and on after I left my husband? And the several months we spent talking about possibly getting married? Any of that ring a bell?"
    Mercifully, my brain injury prevents me remembering the rest of the conversation—charming though it was, I am sure.

There have been many instances where I forgot things...recently my kids told me that they needed me to pick them up at 4:30 pm after they are done with their after-school club. That afternoon, I went to school at their usual pick up time of 3:10 pm and waited in the car circle for about 30 minutes, as all the other cars came and went, and I still didn't see my kids! I was about to go in to check, when suddenly I remembered I needed to pick them up at 4:30 not 3:10 p.m.
    Another thing that happens a lot is when I make my own yogurt. The process is to first boil the milk and then cool it until it is warm. But every time I put it on the stove I have to remind my kids to remind me that I have milk boiling on the stove. No matter how many times a week I do this, I still forget until it boils over. "Oh my god, it happened again!" My kids even ask me, "Why is it that you never remember that you have milk on the stove, while you remember so many other things?" You know, I don't have an answer to that.

Mention of “forgetfulness” for me brings to mind the archetypal musician’s nightmare, of being on stage in front of an audience and somehow prevented from performing—your bow flies out of your hand when you raise it to the string to play, or you’re playing the instrument but no sound comes out, or the instrument mysteriously disappears, or...you discover you’ve forgotten how the music goes. All the variations on this nightmare seem to come down to a fear of not being adequately prepared to perform, or maybe to a Freudian wish of being completely prepared—so prepared that you can deal effortlessly with any and all of the strange surprises a performance situation can throw your way. Fear of forgetting the musical text—of having a “memory slip” in performance, and struggling to move past it as discretely as possible without disrupting the flow of the music—is a major reason that a lot of musicians don’t memorize their solo repertoire, or even if they do, they keep their music open on the stand in front of them just in case. But that still doesn’t cover all performance eventualities—will you be ready to play on when the lights suddenly go out?
    One evening, the chairman of the Union of Bulgarian Composers looked up towards the fourth-floor windows of the UBC building and noticed that the concert hall’s lights were brightly lit. He rushed upstairs and turned off the main switch, having forgotten that the concert scheduled for that evening was in progress. His bout of forgetfulness, luckily short-lived, was also a test of our memories—when the hall went pitch-dark and the notes before us disappeared, we continued to play “by heart” until the lights came on again.

My husband and I watched The Contender last night, with Joan Allen. He'd borrowed the DVD in the afternoon from the local library, which had acquired only last month. Before we started watching, he said, "Joan Allen was in some other movie about the U.S. president and vice president. Interesting that there's another one."
    The first time I told him that I that scene seemed familiar, he said, "No, no, we've not seen this before."
    I said it a couple of more times before the end, but, "No, no...."
    Then at the end, I said, "I am SURE we have seen this before. Let me see the box....Yes! It was released in 2000!"
    My husband said, "Well, I have NO MEMORY of anything about this film, although the title did sound vaguely familiar. Do you think that my movie memory gives out after ten years or so?"
     Ha, a lot sooner, I'd say! And maybe mine too, a little.

I was sick on my birthday last month so I wasn't able to drive to the DMV to get my drivers license renewed before it expired. I worried and worried about this. If I drove with an expired license, I wasn't sure I wound't get a ticket, unless I could convince the cop that I had been too sick to drive to the DMV and I was on my way there RIGHT NOW!
    I finally made an appointment and went today to renew. I did pass the written test—missed only two. But when I tried to pay the fee, they told me that my license didn't expire until next year. I wouldn't have gotten a ticket after all!
    I was sure we were far enough into the new year for me to remember what year it is now. But I guess it couldn't be that, because if I still though it was 2012...I just don't remember WHY I thought my license expired on my birthday THIS YEAR. Am I that old?

As I was carrying a capsule of Phydeaux's antihistamine to where he was still sacked out on the sofa in front of the TV, I completely forgot what I was going in there for. When I reached the kitchen, I poured some water and took the capsule myself! I was so groggy this morning I could barely get out of bed. [Reused from last week, it was so pertinent today.]

Speaking of Erectile Dysfunction, abbreviated ED—which also stands for Erectile Dementia—I learned something new recently, which is that humans are the only mammal that eats meat that also has seminal vesicles (instrumental in producing semen). That’s right, only herbivorous mammals have seminal vesicles. Carnivorous mammals like cats do not. Does not this fact suggest that eating meat might be the cause of ED? Could it be that real macho men eat vegetables?

Last Thursday I came back from a day of skiing (admittedly, very tired.) About an hour later I started looking for my wallet. Not in any pocket. Not on my desk. Not in the car. I called the grocery I’d stopped at for coffee and a snack. Nope. Finally gave up and cancelled my credit card, with the usual devastating consequences. An hour later I discovered my wallet in the drawer where it belongs—a place I had never thought to look. I did not and do not have any memory of putting it away.
    Not quite as bad as my wife’s most infamous: At the end of a camping trip we had dinner in Aspen. Two hours and 150 miles later she recalled that her purse was still at the restaurant. We turned around....

Forgetfulness caused me a very close call one time. Cliff and I were eating our breakfast at a motel we were staying at. I put my purse on the floor by the table. When we got back to our room, I remembered it and raced back down to the dining room. A couple were at our table but hadn't noticed my purse on the floor! It scared me soooo bad!

I cannot recall a major episode of forgetfulness at the moment (although perhaps this is one of those moments!), but I do find myself forgetting little anecdotes that I plan to tell someone when I run into him. My friends seem to do the same, but then something will jog our memory and we eventually remember, often several conversations later.
    When I think of memory loss, I am reminded of my grandfather Loyd. By the time I was in grade school, he was already experiencing a good deal of short-term memory problems, which progressed until his death (when I was in the 9th grade). One of the more difficult situations I remember was when my grandma had to stay in the hospital for several weeks after falling and breaking her hip. My grandpa asked where Florine was every day. Eventually, he started remembering that she was in the hospital, but at that point, he almost seemed to think that she wasn't actually going to return, as though we might have only told him that she would return to keep him from worrying. When she did finally return, he was pleasantly surprised each time he woke up from a nap and found her in the house, as though it was the first time to see her back. Eventually, as before, he started remembering that she was home.

The bathroom in our bedroom that we use most of the time has a window in it. After being in there this morning I opened the window but since the heat was still on I shut the bathroom door. A little later I went into the bedroom and noticed the bathroom door was closed so I thought Cliff was in there. Later I walked back into our bedroom and again saw that the bathroom door was still closed and I thought, Boy, Cliff has been in there a long time! So I went to the door and said, "Cliff, are you okay?" No answer, so I became alarmed and tore the door open...the bathroom was empty!
    Then I remembered...Cliff had been out in the yard the whole time!

I have not had a single significant episode of forgetfulness that I can remember.
_______________
Copyright © 2013 by Morris Dean
* Oops, when I scheduled today's fish to publish last night at midnight, I forgot to include Mark Dryden's "Ode to Forgetfulness," which is what prompted today's topic in the first place:

Please comment