Yeah,
I know, sort of a lame take on the iconic 1990's television commercial
featuring an elderly gal with a medical emergency who urgently needed
assistance with her feeble self. Thanks to "Life Call," she had someone
who was able to prop her up, and all was well.
So
far I'm not in need of Life Call to rescue me from a frail bone-related fall,
but I am in dire need of some sort of life
call to save me from an increasingly enfeebled brain. They say the mind is
the first to go, and my memory--which until recently I'd successfully prodded
into action with a regular machine-gunning of reminder alerts on my iCal each
day--has taken a day at the beach and decided it doesn't want to return just
yet, if ever.
Thus, I have
placed practically my entire memory in the evidently disabled hands of my
MacBook's iCal, which it seems has aged in dog years itself and is failing in
its own wretched memory to remind me of all that I can't help but forget. Two
operating systems ago, my iCal reminders worked regularly, even though I
overloaded the application with unrealistic demands: most every function of my
day popped up to remind me to do it, short of basic hygiene functions such as
"remember to brush teeth." So many demands that while it reliably
reminded me, it also crashed constantly. So I upgraded to a new operating
system and the failures became rampant. My reminders would pop up for one
event, but not for the next. But I'd not remember to check my calendar to see
what it was forgetting to remember. The next upgrade failed me even more. I'm a
victim of the memory of both me and my fail-safe computer, failing all over the
place.
Since my calendar
can't even remember to remember, I'm holding out hope they soon come out with
helper dogs for failing memories.
I felt a little
relieved after chatting with my friend Tana the other day on the phone while
she was preparing to leave for the gym. As she was talking on speakerphone, I
heard water running in the background.
"Don't
worry, I'm not going to the bathroom," she said. "I'm just filling up
my water bottle."
Well, of course
any woman with good girlfriends knows that occasionally we all happen to race
into the loo while on the phone—it's a hazard of friendship. So I just laughed
and told her it wouldn't have mattered regardless. We talked for a minute more
when suddenly Tana stopped.
"Oh, crap.
Where's my water bottle?" she asked.
As if defining my
dilemma for my own affirmation, she did what I regularly do: forgot the
simplest of things in the shortest period of time imaginable. It's what we do
best. All day long. And fight it with the meager tools at our disposal to keep
us from having to purchase ear horns and walkers and resign ourselves to our
dwindling age and capabilities.
The other day I
suffered the hat trick of memory shortcomings. First, I lost my reading glasses
in the time it took to swap out shirts. A few minutes later, I became vexed
because I couldn't find the enormous pile of tax information it had taken me an
entire day to find, which I'd then put somewhere I'd know where to find it. Shortly thereafter, I needed to recall the
brand of car I'd rented a few days earlier, as I wanted to be sure we didn't
consider it while shopping for a new car. I'd made a point of remembering the brand. To no avail.
And that's the
thing. I'm always putting things where I know I'll remember them. And rarely
do. I walk to a food cabinet while fixing dinner, forgetting in six short steps
what I'd gone there to retrieve. I wake at 3 a.m. with brilliant ideas, but
don't want to wake completely to write them down, certain I'll recall by dawn.
Never do. Yet then I wake up in the middle of the night over mundane things,
like forgetting to soak black beans for dinner, only to not be able to sleep, recalling
everything I need to remember to do that I haven't done and worry that I won't
remember to do it. I leave notes everywhere, only to not know where the notes
are. I record reminders on my phone. Only to forget to listen to them later.
Maybe life's
pressing needs are actually squeezing my brains dry. Sounds like I could use a
good vacation.
A conversation
between me and Tana these days goes something like this:
"Did you hear
about, oh, what's her name? Long brown hair, lives up that narrow mountain
road."
"Yeah, the
gal with six kids?"
"Exactly. And
that dog that smells like death. Her husband played in a band when he was in
college—"
"Oh, what is her name? It begins with a P, doesn't it?"
"It rhymes
with my mother's middle name, I think."
"What's your
mother's middle name?"
"Amanda."
"Nothing
rhymes with Amanda. But anyhow, we'll think of her name. But did you
hear--they're getting a divorce."
"No! I always knew he was up to no
good."
"Who? Her
husband?"
"Yeah. What's
his name?"
Well, you get the
idea. We have all the minutiae committed to memory but the barebones facts have
evaporated from our gray matter, by some brain-fog that has settled over our
memories, doomed to cloak our thinking and force us into some Sherlock
Holmesian effort to recall. Our trail of deduction requires mental bloodhounds,
and it seems as if our dogs have got up and went.
"Between the
two of us we have a brain," Tana said. And she's right. Which makes me
think maybe I need to simply be paired up with someone, 24/7, from here on out.
Because clearly at this point two heads must be better than one.
Slim to None
Anywhere But Here
Winging It: A Memoir of Caring for a Vengeful Parrot Who's Determined to Kill Me
Accidentally on Purpose (written as Erin Delany)
Compromising Positions (written as Erin Delany)
I'm Not the Biggest Bitch in this Relationship (I'm a contributor)
And these shorts:
Idol Worship: A Lost Week with the Weirdos and Wannabes at American Idol Auditions
The Gall of It All: And None of the Three F's Rhymes with Duck
Naked Man On Main Street
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1 comment:
Welcome to my world... glad to know someone else has joined the club!!
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