I used to have a spectacular memory. I remembered
everything: names, dates, facts, what I’d read, and on which page I’d read it.
This made me a little hard to live with. I was always
reminding people that they were wrong about this and that (mostly unimportant
details).
I never forgot grudges. I never forgot slights.
Now, with age, my memory is dulling. Proper nouns are going
most quickly of all, for some reason: names, places, and such.
But other things are going too.
And this is not perhaps such a bad thing.
I regret that I don’t have lightning recall as I used to.
For one thing, this ruins my chances to ever be a game-show champion. I’ve been
trying out for Jeopardy! for years,
and they keep bringing me in for screen tests, and – you know? – one of these
days they’ll put me on the show, and I’ll be babbling and drooling in the
corner because I can’t remember the name “Miley Cyrus” or “Thomas Edison.”
Oh dear.
But here’s the bright side: I don’t remember the slights and
the grudges anymore either. I was recounting some of the more extraordinary
office affairs and scandals the other day – and there have been some beauties!
– and I couldn’t remember the name of one of the people involved. Which is
probably a good thing: the whole scandal happened in 1994 or so, and I think
one of the participants has since passed away.
I haven’t forgotten most of the happy
things. I remember good times, and cheerful occasions. I remembered a funny
story about two people in the office having a relationship, and they were cute
and funny, and I remembered both their names, and everything about them, twenty
years later. They were nice.
So I’m going tapioca in the brain, but maybe in a good way.
What was your name again?
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