I’ll forget that I wrote this in a couple of months. A great idea about a blog post will strike and I will have to search my blog to see if I have ever written about my memory or lack thereof. True story. Been there done that. I suffer from what is not clinically known as a piss poor memory. I go through life in a haze. My childhood friends ask me most ridiculous questions. Don’t you remember so and so? Don’t you remember my mom’s foyer table? What did you eat yesterday? And I look at them with a dumb look on my face.
My memory has always been horrible.
The other night the kids were doing homework. Yes I took Algebra and Geometry. No I can’t recall the formulas. Yes I was in honors. My kids are out of luck when it comes to my recall abilities. This is why I sometimes journal funny and special moments in their lives. Every few years I read those journals from beginning to end and laugh all over again because I had forgotten so many moments.
My husband just shakes his head since Mr. Smarty Pants has a photographic memory.
This made things extremely difficult in college. When a professor told me to read a chapter in our text-book in order to study for an upcoming text I was done for. I don’t really absorb boring information. I would take my highlighter and highlight the entire chapter. I turned many text books into yellow and blue messes. Multiple choice questions were the bane of my existence. You know what classes I excelled at? Chinese Literature. Anthropology. Those dreaded Business Management 495 classes where I had to solve a corporation’s problem and strategy. I simply used my intuition and then matched it with the stupid principles in the book. I’m good at strategy. I’m good with people. I’m pretty intuitive. I can bake but I still must follow my recipes for items I’ve made over and over and over. It’s all a haze.
One day someone asked me what my son Zak’s personality was like as a baby. My answer was that he was perfect and that he was just the happiest boy in the world. My husband laughed as he exclaimed “don’t you remember those huge temper tantrums he used to have?” He would then proceed to tell me detailed stories of Zak throwing fits, all of which were like wisps in the wind of my brain.
Ummmm….
In fact, my lack of recall may also explain why I’m usually so annoyingly happy all of the time. Even if I fall on hard times, I usually get through and have a limited recollection of those events. It works like a charm but it’s also very bothersome. Why can’t I remember information like others do? My mom says “Lorraine, you remember what you WANT to remember.” I didn’t believe her so I looked it up. Sure enough, your long-term memory stores what data that you believe is worth remembering. In addition you have to be paying attention. Considering I don’t put much stock into material things, other people’s drama or equations that I know I will never use again, this fact makes perfect sense. I literally go through life like La La La. As far as attention goes, I’m even worse.
Ignorance is bliss.
So I’m the kind of girl who lives in the now. I’ve married a guy with a perfect memory. I’m a little bit quirky. I rarely replace my own car keys, only my husband’s keys are missing at the moment thank you very much. I don’t know my way around my own town and need to use GPS to get to the simplest of places. If I don’t respond to a text or an email I have forgotten I have received it. I read books in my book club two days before we meet so I can remember the details and I use that term lightly. Details means plot, not the characters’ names. Six months from now my book club friends will bring up a book we have read and I’ll look at them and say “did we read that?” They will knowingly look at each other and smile.
In my elder years when this only gets worse and I’m wearing big hats with flowers and matching purple pants?
I’ll be the happiest old lady around.
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