Where Did I Put That First Paragraph?

[groovedaddy]

I HAD a great idea for a first paragraph for this column. I thought of it yesterday, and told it to my husband, and he nodded and said, “That’s a good way to start it.”

Now I can’t remember the thought, of course, and neither can he. He claimed he doesn’t even remember having a conversation about the topic even though I reminded him that we discussed it while taking a walk. “When did we take a walk yesterday?” he said.

Increasingly, we are behaving like the characters in “One Hundred Years of Solitude,” who lived in a tiny village afflicted by a mysterious memory disease. The only way they could remember things was to write down the names and affix them to the objects: “table,” “clock” and “chicken.” Or maybe it was “dog.”

I know some memory loss is a normal byproduct of aging. But I still hate the midlife experience of misplacing the car keys, or walking around looking for the iPhone my husband just bought me, or forgetting where I put the gin.

What’s really giving me anxiety, though, is the realization that I have reached a stage where I can no longer remember many of the details of the formative experiences I had when I was young.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/26/fashion/26spy.html?th&emc=th

[yy4me]

1. I'm sure you are far younger than I but I am faced with the same

thing. Write it down or it is gone. Sometimes it is just aging, sometimes things are just forgotten amid the millions of other things we do during the day.

Making notes has become my habit. It is a good way to keep track of things to do. You'd be amazed at how good I am at shifting something for today onto tomorrows list.

One job on todays list will again be shifted to tomorrow. The kitchen cabinets need a good Windex job inside. The notation has make about 10 transitions from one day to the next. Tomorrow, I promise. (unless something else comes along)

[Jane Austin]

2. Let's give ourselves a break.

A couple of hundred years ago, a person had to know what was in the Bible, the Farmers' Almanac, a few laws, when the last freeze occurs, how much butter in a pound cake (a pound!) and stuff like that.

Even if a person knew some history or science, there wasn't as much of it then.

Nowadays, we all have read thousands of books, magazines and newspapers, heard thousands of hours of radio information and music, and God only knows how many plots, schemes and other details from television.

We know the names of towns and neighorhoods in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as the electoral votes allotted to particular states.

In Mr. Jane Austin's case, he remembers the lyrics - including nonsense ones he learned I-don't-know-where - of every song he's ever sung or even heard.

My theory is that as we get older, we simply have got too much stuff in our brains to sort it all out in the proper order every single time.

You can't remember stuff because you are smart, interested and your brain is full. :)