Maria's post yesterday on being old and forgetful struck an all too painful chord with this saggy old bastard.
For example, this happens with alarming frequency:
I'm sitting downstairs and I get a sudden urge for a book that's upstairs in the bedroom, or I decide to go for a spin on the exercise bike that's up there, or maybe record something in the studio …
A few seconds later and I stand there at the top of the stairs and wonder, "What the heck did I come all the way up HERE for?"
Then I look down at my socks and think, "Ah! Slippers!" and head on down the landing to the main bedroom, dig out my slippers from their hiding place under the dresser, put 'em on and amble back downstairs again, only to reach the bottom step and remember just what I went up there for in the first place.
It wasn't slippers.
It never is.
I don't even WEAR slippers.
I've only got some because somebody bought me a pipe, slippers and flat cap and scarf for Christmas once as a joke about getting old (thanks, Steve) and I never got round to throwing them out.
Maybe it's something to do with atmospheric pressure.
The decrease in pressure due to the rise in altitude of climbing the stairs affects the addled and cobwebby remains of my brain and tilts the pointer to the word "slippers".
Maybe it's something buried deep in my past that I've suppressed, that involves a need to … er … wear slippers.
And it's not just the slippers … words go missing, too.
I spend an increasing amount of my time waving my hands about and whining "Hang on … It's on the tip of my tongue".
The worst missing word episode happened while I was on site at one of my buildings, shouting at the contractors about something and a word slipped quietly out the back door and wasn't there when I needed it.
I was left doing frantic "charades"-style hand gestures while the building contractors and the quantity surveyor and the structural engineers all tried to figure out what complicated concept I was trying to get across.
I walked over to the nearest stack, picked one off the top and waved it at them, yelling, "This! I can't remember the word. What the fuck is it?"
The missing word was "brick".
I am an Architect.
I've never lived that one down.
Worst of all, however, is the entire decade of my life that got wiped from my memory.
And I didn't even know until I was in a music shop a few years back and someone was hassling me.
I was getting pretty pissed off with him and did my best to ignore his attentions until I heard him tell the guy behind the counter he used to be in a band with me.
I'd never seen this guy before in my entire life, so I snapped and told him that and a whole lot more in front of shop staff and customers in no uncertain fashion, leaving him to trail out the door looking decidedly embarrassed.
It wasn't until a couple of weeks later when Chris was chuntering on in the studio about some guy who we used to play with who had been given a bizarre ranty, fuck off by me in a music shop that I started to get concerned.
Chris then trawled through his files and came up with photos, tapes, even videos of me happily playing alongside this guy.
Apparently we were in a band together for several months in the early nineties. Almost successfully.
We laugh about it now and are good friends (yes, Dave; I know … ha, bloody ha … Just wait 'til you get this old), but try as he might to remind me I simply cannot remember a thing about it. Or indeed ever meeting him before the music shop debacle. The photos and stuff are proof, but my memory is completely fucked.
Scary.
And now I'm getting old, too, so I can expect a whole lot more of that crap.
Whoopee …
I've also reached the stage when, every time I get up out of a chair or the sofa I make a noise like Grandpa Simpson.
Fuck, fuck, fuckity fucking fuck.
13 comments:
Shit, I do the can't remember thing now and apparently I'm still young. I've been known to find coffee mugs all over the house. I put one down on the way to do something and then not realise I haven't finished it, so I go make another. It becomes a cycle. I start to realise only when the coffee mug supply gets too low.
Don't worry, as long as you know you arse is behind you still you'll be fine.
See? I can't even remember an a where it's needed in a sentence.
Know the feeling Dive. Saw someone the other day after 15 years and was amazed i could recall her name before she slid by!
Also i drive to my first roundabout of the journey often and as i approach, i think now which turning am i taking, where am i going in fact today? I've had to sit there for a moment or even go round it more than once. Now, which blog am i going to next er erm oh yes Paris.
I put my shoes in the fridge on a regular basis. I have to staple my wallet to me to remember where it is.
I left my fondue forks in sydney, a mere two hundred kilometre drive.
And this morning i broke a glass got distracted on the way to cleaning it up and stepped on it on the way back to the computer.
Age is not a factor.
Oh, I know that noise. Mine is more like Marge's, especially when I have bronchitis.
I play charades all day, Dive. Sometimes it helps to make up words and pretend to be clever.
I've developed Reading Tourette's. The number of times I've read a perfectly innocent bit of prose or a newspaper report where I've mistaken a word for "dickhead" or "shagfest" ... it's frightening.
I wonder how old I'll be when I start to talk to myself in shops?
Vic: the way my arse is spreading it won't be behind me much longer; more like all around me!
As for the rest of you, it would appear that one previously unappreciated reason why people blog is that they can't remember what they turned the computer on for in the first place.
Hey, ho. I'm glad I'm not alone.
What the hell are you complaining about, you were able to remember thought processes in your scattered meanderings through the day. That is a world better than I can do, and for the record, I'm younger than you. You're doing fine.
I also lose words all the time. I end up describing the word instead: you know, the thing that when you turn it, the door can be opened . . . Try that one on for size when you are trying not to look like a stupid git!
Hoorah for doorknobs, Fresh.
And hoorah for you for bringing to mind a word with "knob" in it. Hee hee
I worked with a client for FIVE months last year and ran into him at a coffee cafe a few weeks ago. He came up to me and asked me how things were going, etc and I stood there thinking he looked vaguely familiar, but couldn't put my finger on his name or how I knew him. After we said goodbye, I was driving home and THEN I remembered: he was my biggest paying client of last year.
Like Kate, I often put things in the fridge. I have found my cell phone in there several times.
So...was the 90's band memorable? What kind of stuff did you play? C'mon, it will come back to you....
Dive, it happens to EVERYONE - young or old. It's your brain's way of telling you that you need to take a break. So hop on a plane with us to tropical paradise! :D
joy
The Goddess In You
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Maria: I have seen us play on video and it is disturbingly weird because I still don't recognise half the people there. I know Dave well now, but I still feel in myself that I never met him before the music shop.
Odd.
Joy: I wish!
I turned 50 and a couple yesterday and i know exactly how you feel.
I used to think of something in the middle of the night and to remind myself in the morning i would put the book I was reading on the floor beside the bed. When I got up i would think "I yes i must remember to...." Now i get up and say "Who left my bloody book on the floor?"
Old age hey - if it hasn't fallen off - it has fallen down i say!!!!
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