I walked into the church kitchen where two faithful volunteers were preparing our Wednesday night church supper. Kitchen banter, the mixed aromas of different foods cooking, and the anticipation of fellowship, are like an open window bringing fresh air to my day.
“What’s going on?” I ask, to begin our conversation.
“I’m on my way home,” Ann Laura laughs. “I forgot the milk for the mashed potatoes. I’ll be back in a few.”
Glancing at Kathy, the other cook, we share a smile.
“I do well just to remember to get here, anymore,” Anna Laura chuckles as she hurries out.
“Now would you look over there,” Kathy grins, pointing to bag of cup-towels as she dices celery. “She was supposed to take those home with her. And I was supposed to remind her, but wouldn’t you know it? I forgot.”
I find my friends’ forgetfulness amusing and so decide to capitalize on it.
“Tell you what I’m going to do: I’m going to call Anna Laura and ask her where her cup-towels are.”
Kathy chuckles with approval.
So, I reached in my back pocket for my cell phone.
It wasn’t there. Nor was it in my upstairs study, or in the church office. A search of my car proved futile as well.
“Kathy,” I said, as I walked back to the kitchen, “I can’t call Anna Laura to tease her about forgetting everything because I forgot where I put my cell phone.”
Why do we forget stuff?
It seems we have so many little items to remember these days, and as we try remembering what we’re supposed to remember, our “inputs,” attack us in the form of phone calls, emails, text messages, breaking news on the radio or TV, the kids chattering—all of which compound our problem: we are plagued by forgetfulness.
All those little things we’re supposed to remember add up to a conglomerate of memory items: vitamins/medications, wallet, purse, keys, cell phone, books, letters, bills, coat or sweater, hand sanitizers, and Kleenexes, just to mention a few.
And if you exercise before you come back home from work, you have to remember your work-out clothes. The same holds true if you bring a lunch to work. Forgetting one little item—like a sock for your workout or your salad dressing for lunch—can disrupt your routine.
Different people cope with this challenge in different ways. Some like a checklist with written items they can mark off before leaving the house. Others say it aloud, “cell phone, keys, breath mints,” like a pilot shouting the preflight checklist.
And then, some of us make a checklist, only to forget the checklist.
Then, others try to avoid that by putting their check list in their cell phone, which works famously well until they forget their cell phone.
Or, some people have that checklist in mind, but then get distracted when someone calls on their cell phone, which they have at least remembered, but which itself, becomes a cause for them to forget.
I like the idea that our memory is, by design, selective. Dr. Robert M. Kraft, in Psychologytoday.com relates this thought by way of a short story by Jorge Luis Borges, “Funes the Memorious.” Funes, who is thrown from a horse and permanently paralyzed, is forced to spend his days in a darkened room, working diligently to develop his memory, which eventually becomes so prodigious that he remembers every detail in his life. Thus, when Funes recalls the events of the previous day, it takes a full 24 hours for him to do so.
“Forgetting is a necessary part of remembering what’s important,” Kraft concludes.
Some researchers believe the brain sweeps some memory details away, like the program that wipes data off the hard drive on your computer.
I don’t need to remember a pin number that’s been replaced, or the combination for my high school locker. Those are good things to forget, I suppose.
But I do need to remember to return some phone calls, fulfill visits I promised to make, and mail bills that are due.
So, I still rely on the old fashioned “to do” list, as imperfect as it is and try my best to remember the little things.
“Those mashed potatoes sure look good,” I tell Anna Laura, just before supper.
“I can recall every ingredient by memory,” she says, with a chuckle.
And taking a bite, I must agree.