Memories

I staggered out of the house today before 10am; a relative Herculean task on a weekend. I’m not lazing in bed of course. The body clock as always is set to 6am. But I potter about mindlessly for a bit, engage in enraged outbursts at the programs on IView or Al Jazeera as I do some housework and generally meander my way through to eggs on toast at some stage.

I was to meet an old school student (well she’s not old- but I taught her a few years ago) at a place of her choosing. I engaged my GPS map thingy and as usual the voice wouldn’t work. I narrowly missed smashing into a blue Accord as I fiddled with the volume- rechecking the mute was off, checking the media sound… nothing. Half way down Ginninderra Drive nothing had changed on the map. So I press it off and on again. Worked for a bit and then would stop when I made a turn. I checked the location, I switched it off and on again 6 times. It tried to send me in swooningly varied locations all around the city, everywhere but where I was supposed to go.

Anyway, I then took the wrong turning into the carpark and headed up the ramp, passing the numerous spots I actually wanted to park in on the ground floor. After an unwanted tour of the carpark I finally found my way back to the ground, parked and ventured out into the rain. I went into the café, looked around and took a seat to wait for my young friend.

The waitress asked me to sign into the check in app. “How do I do that?” No doubt all of you are well versed in this new Covid safety measure. She tried to show me but I was caught at the first hurdle where Google wanted me to sign in. “WTF is my password?!” I tried a couple to no avail. I sent the waitress away while I searched through my list of passwords, so frequently updated, it’s embarrassing. I finally found what it was, signed in, downloaded the app and all was well.

So it’s not that I’m a completely moronic Luddite, I can muddle my way through technology albeit probably the long way, but get there in the end, I do. It’s the remembering the copious number of passwords that throws me. I keep forgetting them. I have a tried and tested way of prompting myself; if for example, it’s my bank password, then the first letter will be “B” for bank. So I choose a city or country that starts with “B” and then add a random year. So I at least can take a stab at a guess. But across my various devices, and not being near my password list for whatever reason, the passwords end up having to be frequently changed and I am left in a state of constant confusion.

I did sign up for Last Pass which is a central hub for passwords. It is a free service that keeps track of all your passwords and even generates them if you so desire. That’s great. But I’ve now forgotten the password to get into the hub. To regain access to many sites, you need to jump through so many hoops (understandably of course) that it leaves one quite frustrated at the end of the hour long process of trying to remember who on April 2004 when you opened the account/app/site membership, was thought to be your favourite pet from the 70’s and who now today, is remembered as your favourite pet. Was it Boris or Hudson or maybe the adorable Bozzy Wozzy or possibly Sebastian? Did I count the Holden EK as my first car or the Datsun as my first new car? And did I think if I said that my first house was in Watson, that someone who vaguely knows my personal information could hack into my account, so I chose to say it was Tenterfield (which technically it was as I was born there)? Who knows what I was thinking in April 2004!

So I’m sitting in the café by myself, conspicuously alone and OLD among the young crowd, using all my mental faculties to find the password for bloody Google when my young friend replies to my message of “Have you forgotten?”

But it was of course me who’d forgotten. I myself had arranged for Sunday, not Saturday. So I ordered the avo toast and downed it alone and defiantly and told them I’d be there again the next day. Hopefully accompanied.

So after 770 words I finally come to – it’s a bitch getting old. I love the freedom to dress how I damned well please, speak how I want, go and do what I want and ignore who I want. I love my brain generally and all that I’ve learned so far and embracing what I’ve yet to learn. I have a lot to teach and much to say and even more to hear which is quite exciting. But after the dreaded experience with Dad’s dementia, I do worry that I might head that way too. I forget words -lethologica (which I had to look up again by the way)-which is supposed to be a symptom of menopause which I left behind a few years ago. I remember saying to Liam, while cooking, “can you please chop the …” I couldn’t for the life of me think of the word. I was staring at the little blighters, had been eating them all my life, but could not recall their name. So in my panic, I described them as best I could using the basic categorisation technique- small, oval, green- and settled on “cut up the not-grapes”.

It was of course olives. I thought that was all over. But here it is back again (or perhaps I’ve forgotten and it’s been with me the whole time). My students love it. I am mid lecture, pacing the room, full of passionate bluster and then I stop suddenly and surprisingly. I look confused, I look at them pleadingly, I try the categorisation technique… and the students always come up with helpful suggestions. “United Nations? Melody? Accompany? Hyperbole?(well done that student) Sardines?

We all, I am told, suffer from the WTFAIDH syndrome. You jump up from your seat with a clear purpose and confident stride across the room to the… laundry? No it was study. Get to the study and look about for a cue. (What the Fuck am I doing here?) Bookshelf, desk, sofabed, plant, handbag, computer… Wrack brain. No, it’s gone. Go back and retrace your steps and hopefully your thoughts. Sit down again on the lounge. Random thoughts: cat sleeping on chair (oh to be a cat), dinner, should have done my meditation, sore leg, am I hungry? No it’s gone.

Where does it go?! The thought to mobilise you from deep in the throes of the fantasy of the delicious Nathan Fillion in Castle and the case of the murdered art auctioneer. It was imperative that you go to the study then to retrieve/ check something. It got you up from your comfortable slouch FFS. Why does it go? Why in ten steps does it just vanish like a Bermuda Triangle of the brain. It was a blip on the radar and then it was gone. UFO’s? Supernatural magic? Like single socks and the pen you JUST HAD IN YOUR HAND. Where do they vanish to?!

I’d like to think that it’s because I’m so bright, my thoughts are working at such lightning speeds that it’s difficult for anyone other than a supercomputer to keep up. But realistically, someone who often doesn’t know what day it is and consistently puts food on the stove and walks away until smoke alerts me to the fact that an unwatched pot will boil dry, is not really that clever.

So I'm left with; part of aging is becoming forgetful or looming dementia. Or both. I can memorise my 25 new students’ names in a couple of lessons but can’t remember my favourite student from last semester. It’s uncanny. They come bounding up to you to tell you how much you mean to them and how they so much enjoyed your class and you look at them and know who they are, but not what they’re called. What is that? Do we even know how the memory works? Why is it so elusive? Why can I remember Carmelito racing round our yard when I was eight but not the month long tour of Europe on a bus when I was 22? I know the alcohol played a large part in the latter, but still. You’d think I’d remember something.

I know a little about encoding, storage and retrieval. And it’s the retrieval that I'm focussed on right now. It’s the split second thought that vanishes that fascinates me. That “I have to go get…” and in two steps it’s gone. So I'm thinking that I have a storage problem – not so much retrieval- as I think that my thought doesn’t even make it to storage. I have decided I lack shelf stackers. No one’s there to pick up the newly arrived stock. The truck bay’s empty. And someone must come along and pilfer the goods. Bloody thief.

But uncannily, sometimes this thief returns the goods at 2.46 am. You awaken and recall that you had to just check that you’d paid the electricity bill on your laptop in your study. The thought had arisen because there’d been a power outage during Castle that only lasted a couple of minutes, but it had alerted you to the fact that life would be unbearable without electricity and you’d better not piss of ACTEW- and then did you pay the electricity bill?

Stress can cause forgetfulness. Yes, yes. I know that. But I'm not stressed watching Castle. So what’s going on?

Short term memory lasts between 15 and 30 seconds. And therein lies my problem. In hauling my aged butt up from the lounge 12 precious seconds have already elapsed. STM also entails remembering up to 7 bits of information at any one time. In getting up from the lounge, my focus is now on; where’s my thongs?, ow my knee hurts, if you don’t start exercising you great tubby lard arse you won’t be able to move in a  couple of years, God imagine being so obese and lazy you end up literally growing into the sofa, get out of the way Tut I'm trying to get up, don’t do the “I know you’re going alone and I'm coming with you” Cassie- I’ll be right back, maybe I’ll just have a small bowl of chips before dinner- and there you have it. 7 bits of information overriding my STM first memory of got to check if I’ve paid the electricity bill. But I suppose one must focus on the positive. Like a reconfigured game of Cluedo, at least I remembered the room.