December 7, 2007

• Anecdotes from the Life of a Forgetful Mind

  Whenever something happens that exceeds the paramaters of normality or is uniquely impressive, my friends, or sometimes myself, simply say in an awed tone, “Next level.”  For instance, watching all of the Lord of the Rings movies straight through—without going to the bathroom—is ‘next level.’ 

  With that I must say that I think the history of my forgetfulness has reached ‘next level’ status.  The stories I have demonstrating my mind’s apathy to remembering what I tell it to, even when it’s something important, have been slowly accumulating.  Here are a few examples.

  • There are two parking lots at the school I attend, and they match in every regard, and are right next to one another.  More than one time this quarter I went out to the wrong parking lot completely convinced that that was the parking lot where I had parked my car, and concluded that my car must have been either towed or stolen.  A girl in one of my classes even remarked later in class, “Phil, get a little lost in the parking lot earlier?”
  • I borrowed a DVD from a library around the school as well, and it was due on a Monday.  Come Monday, I didn’t have it because I had left it at home, about 90 miles away.  So I went in and told them what happened and asked if I could have an extension since I was going home the next day, and I would bring it back then.  So they gave me an extension until Wednesday (even though I was getting it Tuesday) to turn it in, which was a relief since it is a dollar a day for being overdue.  I went home and got it Tuesday, and though their gracious extension and my passionate desire to not pay a dollar for it being late, I forgot to turn it in until Thursday. 
  • On this previous Monday I traveled back to school from my home and got there around 1:30 P.M., and got online to check what time specifically a few of my finals were.  Turns out my geography exam was 90 minutes later at 3:00 P.M. that day, rather than two days later on Wednesday as I had thought.  After handing in my hopeless test, I told the teacher the misunderstanding I had had, and after laughing at me said, “If you would have come in Wednesday I would have given it to you then.”  Perhaps I’m not forgetful enough.  *Sigh*
  • Another Monday earlier this year (hmm, strong Monday motif here, I may be on to something) I was preparing all day for a speech I had to deliver in a class that night.  I was frantically preparing in geography when it struck me we might be required to include a visual aid in the presentation, so I went over to a guy who was in the class who was in my speech class and asked him about it.  It came up in the conversation that our speeches were not until the next week.  Needless to say, I went to sleep that night without any speech closure at all.  The next week came and I was preparing all Monday again, but it also just so happened the speech was not until the next week and on Wednesday. 

  What finally prompted me to write on this is that today I walked into my house after having eaten waffles at my neighbor Roy’s house, and went up to my little brother and gave him a big bear hug saying, “Happy Birthday buddy!”  My mother was in the room and gasped dramatically when I said this.  She had forgotten entirely. 

  Humans exist in a miserable medium somwhere between having eidetic memories that remember everything and five second memory spans that can’t even remember they have five second memory spans. 

  What is remembering something anyway?  If we can’t remember something, there’s not a whole lot you can do about it.  It’s somewhere in your mind’s cellar, stubbornly refusing to respond to your PA announcement: “Attention: Certain piece of information. You know who you are.  You are needed at the main office.  Please come immediately.”  But it might come, it might not; it’s not really something you can control.  It’s like wishing for snow; it might snow, it might not.  Because really, think of all the meaningless things you’ve seen just once that you remember, and all the people’s names, or actually important things, that you forget.  The mind is just arbitrary.  Look at some things I’ve seen once and still remember:

  • The first sentence in the novel Of Human Bondage is “The day broke gray and dull.”
  • Descartes died because he contracted pneumonia from walking in the cold at 5 A.M. to the castle of Queen Christina of Sweden to tutor her.
  • I saw this more than once, but I was still extremely young: the names of the main girls on the ’96 olympics squad who won the overall gold medal were Dominic Dawes, Dominic Muciano, Carry Strugg, and Shannon Miller. 
  • Bon vivant means ‘a person who loves fine dining and drink.’ 

  Now, now, none of you go all ‘planner police’ on me either.  I would probably just lose it anyways.  Well, actually, the main problem I have with a planner is that it would let my mind know it’s handicapped.  As long as I don’t have a planner, I keep believing my mind is all I need to remember something. 

  Someday, however, this could become a problem of some consequence.  “It’s our anniversary?  So that means you’re my … wife?”

  • 10:30 am
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