Memory Loses Edge To I Dunno

Today, let’s explore memory, which many regard as the most profound mystery of the human brain, along with the propensity of songs like “Guantanamera” to get stuck inside of it for days.

To reiterate, today’s topic is memory. I came up with this idea yesterday, and you have no idea how grateful I am to have dredged it up a full 24 hours later. Because this week my memory record has been poor. In fact, this week my memory record goes something like this: Memory 0, I Dunno 2.

That’s because for two days straight, I have endured a scare in the shower of Norman-Bates-like proportions. On Monday, I was standing in my steamy hot shower, all scrubbed and shaved. My hand was moving toward the faucet handle to shut the water off. Suddenly, I froze, which isn’t easy while enveloped in steam.

Had I shampooed my hair? I couldn’t remember. I looked at the ledge and saw my bottle of Head ‘n’ Shoulders Dry Scalp. It just sat there. It told no tales.

I searched my short-term memory bank and discovered to my alarm: The bank was empty. The depositors had fled for the Cayman Islands. The previous five minutes of my life were an utter blank. After thinking hard, I finally came up with a dim memory of myself pouring shampoo into my palm and working up a big old head of suds, just like the people on shampoo commercials. Yet was this memory from five minutes ago, or from five days ago? The memory was so vague, it could have been from five years ago.

So I decided to do some scientific investigation. I took the Head ‘n’ Shoulders bottle and examined it closely. Were there any signs of recent usage? Nothing. Then I touched my hair. It was wet. Interesting, but inconclusive. With my lousy memory, I might very well have completed Step One (“wet hair”) and then forgotten Step Two (“wash”).

Finally, I came up with a foolproof experiment. Have you ever done the “repeat” step in the shampoo-rinse-repeat cycle? It always takes much less shampoo the second time to make a spectacular head of suds. So I took a tiny amount of shampoo and applied it to my hair. In seconds, I had me a huge, white football helmet of suds.

The results were conclusive: I HAD shampooed.

How depressing. This meant that I had just experienced what a friend of mine refers to as a “senior moment.” I am not a senior at all by the “senior-discount” benchmark, but I am old enough to be quite alarmed by these hints of creeping senility.

But are they truly hints of senility? My middle-aged peers and I believe that we are rushing headlong toward decrepitude whenever we forget our car keys. But as for me, I have been forgetful for about 45 years now. When I was a kid, I was forgetful about things like dates in history class. In college, I was forgetful about things like the existence of history class. Ever since, I’ve been forgetful about anniversaries, mothers’ birthdays, the IRS deadline, car payments, my PIN number, etc., etc.

To reiterate, today’s topic is memory. The point is, many people’s memories have always been bad, a fact that they conveniently forget, forgetting being the thing they do best.

To reiterate, today’s topic is the Federal Reserve’s monetary policy. Many analysts believe that Alan Greenspan plans to cut interest rates even further to counteract the chilling effect of the Asian collapse, yet I believe that … Today’s true topic, as I am fully aware, is memory. I was able to overcome that brief lapse through the most time-tested memory aid, the written word. If I had been merely talking to you on the subject of memory, or God forbid, giving a formal speech, I might have completely lost the thread and gone off on a tangential, but highly informative, disquisition on inflation and deflation. Some kind woman in the audience would have had to raise her hand, and say, gently, “Excuse me, sir, but you appear to have completely lost your mind.”

Yet, since I deal in the written word, I needed only to refer to the words on the screen to remember exactly what I was talking about, which was, the art of shampooing. As I read a bit more closely, I see that another and possibly more central topic was: memory.

The point is, the best way to overcome the deficiencies of memory is to write things down. This is why the Sumerians invented writing, so they wouldn’t have to remember every little thing. Take notes, or even cuneiforms. Don’t trust your fragile human mind, especially if you are prone to lose it.

Now, in case you thought I had forgotten, which I haven’t, I did mention TWO separate shower incidents this week. The second one occurred on Tuesday. I was reaching to turn the shower off, and once again, I couldn’t remember whether I had shampooed my hair. I dimly recalled dispensing shampoo into my palm, but that image might have been left over from Monday, when I had to do it twice.

This is getting ridiculous. From now on, I’m taking a crayon into the shower and keeping a written log on the wall of the stall. Every day, I will note whether I have shampooed. I might also note whether I have remembered to wash the rest of my body. It doesn’t hurt to make sure.