If memory were a food, mine would be Swiss cheese: so filled with holes that it seems more not to be there than to be there.
My wife asks me to go to the store.
“Sure,” I say.
“We need milk, soy sauce, and …” and it takes no more. I’m already reaching for my phone to pull up Evernote, the app which takes the place of my memory, and start writing the list.
“Can’t you remember a handful of things?” I ask myself as my thumbs key in the list. “Five things. What’s so hard about five things?”
The truth of the matter is, if I didn’t walk it down, I would take fewer steps than there are items on the list and already forget have the list.
First step — there goes the dog food. Second step — soy sauce is no more. Third step — well, maybe I can keep milk in mind since it’s the most common thing we all buy in the story.
Sometimes I try to keep the list in my head. I make meaningless, stupid sentences or images to help me remember — a method with a fancy name that leads to ordinary results.
“Let’s see. Soy sauce, dog food, and milk. I’ll think of our dog as a big St. Bernard, with a jar of soy sauce around its neck instead of that little barrel of whatever they carry. What do they carry? I think it’s brandy, meant to warm up people who are lost in snow — a bit of warmth in the middle of a snow storm. That’s stupid, though. I remember reading that drinking anything alcoholic is a terrible idea when you’re cold. It might warm you up for a minute, but your body spends more energy converting the alcohol to sugar than the benefits of the alcohol….” and I can’t even remember to stay on task long enough to complete my picture of a soy-sauce-carrying dog chasing after a milk truck.
Then I get to the store and I can’t remember my stupid picture. “It had a pet in it, didn’t it? Wasn’t it our cat, skiing down a hill of matches? Cat food and matches?”