My Dog is Chelsea

It’s official! Every state in which I have ever lived that has a major league baseball team will now be represented in the playoffs: New York, Illinois and Colorado. I’m a Yankee/Cubs fan myself, but way to go Rockies! What an exciting finish.

Anyway, I’ve come here to talk about my memory—and how it sucks.

There was once a time when I could remember everything. I scoffed at the idea of using a calendar or planner. Who needs that?! I would think to myself. It’s just extra weight in your bag. I was capable of remembering homework assignments, doctor appointments and due dates for school assignments (except for the occasional bout of strategic amnesia) without so much as a scribble in a notebook.

In fact, I remember questioning my mother’s poor memory— “What do you mean you can’t remember any of the names of your elementary school teachers?!?!? Or your friends from college?!?!? That’s ridiculous!” —and thinking that I was lucky to have escaped that gene. After all, I could remember all the back to when I was three years old.

These days, I still find myself in awe of my mother’s apparent lack of memory.

MDIC: Next week is my birthday.
Mother: Oh yeah! How old are you turning?
MDIC: Twenty-five.
Mother: No!
MDIC: Yep!
Mother: Really? How could that be?
MDIC: Well, you know, I was born 25 years ago.
Mother: Are you sure? That’s awful!
MDIC: But the good thing is that I’ll be able to drive a rental car when we go on vacation together.
Mother: Oh! That’s great!

[five minutes elapse]

Mother: … so then I say to her, “It must have been at least 22 years since you saw Laura. She was only 1 then and she’s 23 now!”
MDIC: Mother, I’m 25. Or I will be in a week.
Mother: You are?! Are you sure?
MDIC: Yes. Seriously?
Mother: Twenty-five? Oh no!
MDIC: No, it’s good! Remember the car rental thing?

Anyway. I make fun of it now but it’s my future. Slowly, actually not-so-slowly, I am becoming my mother—in many ways, and most of them are good. But the memory thing is not. I still remember all of the names of my elementary school teachers (but I have to practice) and Goddess help me if I ever forget the name of a college friend. But it’s happening. And it’s scary.

I have learned that I have no memory of things that don’t last very long, or that I wasn’t fully paying attention to. This bites me in the ass particularly in regards to conversations Asa claims we have had but I have no recollection of. If I have a deadline or a doctor’s appointment, not only do I need to write it down in multiple calendars, but it often helps to tape a note to the door. If I don’t respond to your email, it’s not because I didn’t want to—it’s because I forgot. Plain and simple.

Strangely, I can remember the odd detail or two. For instance, I can locate every recipe in my entire arsenal in under 20 seconds—not only do I remember which cookbook it belongs to, but I know approximately where in the book it is located and what picture sits next to it. And that’s if I actually need the cookbook—which is rare, because once I’ve cooked something it’s stuck in my head forever (hopefully). I will sometimes pull it out as a guide, but it’s usually unnecessary. Note that this seems to be true for my mother as well, and her cookbook collection is about 15 times larger than mine.

Meanwhile, I noticed as I left work this evening that I was desperately low on gas. “Don’t forget to stop for gas before you go home!” I reminded myself. So I made a plan: I would get gas, and then cross the street to pick up a few groceries. Well, somehow I remembered the grocery part of the deal but not the gas, which I noticed only after I parked at the market and spotted my droopy gas gage.

“Crap! I meant to get gas before shopping! I’ll never remember to get it when I’m done!” I said this aloud. I do talk to myself when I’m alone—it helps me remember.

So I fished in my purse for a pen to write a note. But there wasn’t one. Instead, I found an old parking meter stub in the center console. It still had some stickiness left to it, so I affixed it to my window in hopes that it would remind me to get gas. (In Portland, you get a sticker when you pay your meter which you place on your window to prove you paid.) But then I realized that I would probably not notice the sticker, since I often go weeks without remembering to remove old stickers and I would probably think it was just normal.

I tried a couple of places—the steering wheel, the stereo—before settling on the gear shifter. No way would I be able to even get out of the parking spot without spotting the oddly-placed sticker, which would trigger a series of synapses in my brain to remember the gas.

Satisfied with my own trap, I went shopping. I had three specific things on my mental list—milk, granola, bread—but headed straight for the produce section after immediately forgetting why I had stopped at the market in the first place. Produce is always my first stop, and since we always need more of it, it’s a good place to window shop until I remember my real purpose. Eventually, I stumbled across the relevant products—even a few that I’d forgotten we’d needed.

Back at the car. My groceries loaded, I open the door to get going. I turn the car on, step on the clutch, reach for the gear shifter—

“THE STICKER!! I NEED GAS!! YES!!!” The sticky stick shift brought back a flood of memory. Victory was mine.

In the end, I remembered the gas. Of course, when I got home and began cooking (quinoa-stuffed acorn squash, Joy of Vegetarian Cooking, towards the back but before the section on eggs, next to a fabulous photo of a golden, overflowing stuffed squash topped with freshly ground salt and pepper and melted parmesan) I realized I had forgotten something else: parsley.

“Dammit, MDIC, why can’t you ever remember to pick up parsley?!”