On my last diary about aging, a few of us were commenting on our fading memories. The use of notepads, sticky notes, and other helpful reminders. This got me thinking…
Along with our fading memories, we also have the problem of more things to remember. Pin numbers, passwords, screen names, account numbers and so forth. I wrote all that stuff down on a piece of paper, and put it away for safe keeping. Needless to say it is now very safe…
We don’t watch much television, but when we do, even that can be an adventure in memory…we have 4 remotes. 1 for the satellite, 1 for the VCR ( yes we still have one of them ) 1 for the DVD, and of coarse 1 for the TV. Figuring out which one to use, and remembering how to use it can get quite interesting.
My job furnishes us with uniforms. When I need to take them back for cleaning, I put them in a bag, and hang the bag on the door, so I won’t forget them. YEP, you guessed it, I have gotten to work without them. I’m still not sure how I accomplished that one.
I think our memories are like the library, everything we ever knew, is in there somewhere… it’s just that sometimes we misplace the index cards.
For you younger folks, index cards where hand written pre- computer search engines.
If you ask me a question about something or someone, chances are you will get a shoulder shrug, and an “it’s on the tip of my tongue”. But if you really need to know, I’ll call you up at mid-night, when the answer suddenly pops into my head.
Sometimes I know where my car is, but have no idea where the keys are, other times I have the keys in my hand, but don’t have a clue where I parked the car. This happens a lot at Walmart, when I forget which door I came in.
I used to live in fear of forgetting my wife’s birthday or our anniversary, but the last couple years, we have both forgotten our anniversary, so I guess I’m off the hook.
My mother had two old aunts, Victory and Cybil. Aunt Victory lived to be 100 yrs. old, and was sharp as a tack, and mean as a rattle snake right up till the end. Aunt Cybil died in her mid 90s. The last few years of her life, she thought she was a 16 year old girl. She didn’t know my mother or my Grandmother, and had completely forgotten about being married to Uncle Mac for 60 some odd years. What I always wondered is, when she looked in a mirror, did she see a 16 year old girl…
Sometimes being forgetful can come in handy, the words “ooops I forgot” have gotten me out of a lot of garden work.
Now if I could just forget about going to work in the morning, I could go fishing instead.
-RM-