Now Where Did I Leave ...My Memory?

I don’t know about you, but lately, I feel like I am really losing it. I wander from one room to another and mutter to myself: “Now why did I come in here?” Asking out loud is of no use. Finally after a minute of racking my brain, I give up and return to the room I came from. Usually when I go back to Room number one, I suddenly remember what it is I went into Room number two for.

I am not too worried though. I figure I won’t have to get worried until I discover that I start going to a different room, not the room where the object I wanted to retrieve is housed. I call this my “warm theory” Adapting an analogy from the game of tag which I used to play with my school friends, back when I had a memory, I figure as long as I am “warm” as to where the object is, I am okay. So what if I don’t remember what the object is?

This brings up a good point. If I were to play tag these days, I would be pretty useless. I would forget who I was supposed to be tagging. I would have to go around to each player and mumble, “are you, by any chance, “it”?” That’s if I remembered to turn up for the game at all. Friends laugh at me because I routinely leave messages for myself on my answering machine at home so I won’t forget to do something. They get a particular kick out of the fact that I end every reminder with “okay?” It’s then that I have to point out that I am indeed that pathetic, when I hear the message, I will have only a vague recollection of leaving it.

The other things I have trouble remembering are things like my purse, my expensive water bottle (because I didn’t forget that the plastic kind might cause stomach cancer) and one time, that I was supposed to follow my friend Lynn in my car to our friend Lisa’ house. It was only halfway through lunch at the second friend’s house that I remembered that I had left Lynn waiting for me in the parking lot at the end of our hike (okay, if truth be told, I probably never would have remembered until someone said “Where’s Lynn?” during lunch and I remembered with horror precisely where Lynn was.)

My friends are used to my memory loss and they even have a term for it “pulling a Donna” or “a real serviette move” (Lynn and I had mocked a great singing group called The Surreyettes and proposed an alternative group that was the complete opposite in terms of talent and decorum, the Serviettes (british term for napkins)). I read recently that you can exercise your memory and there are even exercises you can follow. I am eager to get going on this and improve my memory, so I cut the article out. Now, if I can only remember where I put it…