4/22/14

FORGETTING DOES NOT MEAN YOU'RE OLD



Today I found an old story I wrote and I’m happy to remember that I had a bad memory even when I was young.  It does NOT mean I’m getting old.  It went like this:

I am trying to teach my nine-year-old son Fred to remember things.  It’s the blind leading the blind.  While driving to a friend’s house to pick up my daughter Susan, I pondered this problem.  While Susan collected her school books, clothes, and coronet, I discussed this forgetting problem with my friend.  Susan handed me the coronet to carry for her.  Still talking, I laid down the coronet, and, of course, I forgot it when we left.  My last words as I went out their kitchen door were, “He’d forget his head if it weren’t attached.” 

Thursday, I photocopied some papers at school and forgot to take the last page out of the machine.  Then I picked up my daughter after her violin lesson.  She handed me the violin to carry.  (Remember the coronet?  Same song, second verse!) We drove back to violin class to get the violin then to school to retrieve the paper from the copy machine.  Then I drove home, forgetting to mail the papers I had copied.

Instead of trying to teach Fred how to remember things, I have started asking him for ideas.  He said tying a string around your finger looks dumb.  Instead, you should bite your finger.  I have never seen him walking around the house biting his finger.  He says he does it at school.  I wonder.

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