‘Creating’ memories

The days are flying, and there are days when time seems to have vanished between sunrise and sunset. I try to recall what I did or what I ate, but I am simply not able to remember. Where did the day go?

However, I can easily identify every single classmate of mine from old school photos. I can remember the lyrics to most of the songs we heard as children.

But now, when someone asks me to sing any new song, I can only remember the tune, and I make up my own lyrics on the fly, much to the embarrassment of my children.

Earlier this week, I was a participant in an event, where our group performed a medley of songs.

We had lots of fun preparing for the event. However, all of us had a problem with our memories and the lyrics. For the first few days we used papers and our phones.

But as with everything else, confidence comes only if we are word perfect. So we tried our best to do away with the papers and our phones.

But this presented another problem – this effort required absolute concentration, where we could not allow even a stray thought to intrude into our minds.

One stray thought and the lyrics just flew away, leaving us opening and closing our mouths like fish, trying desperately to get the lyrics back into our heads.

Courtesy – http://www.123rf.com

What happened to those memory chain games where a group of us sat and reeled off names of animals or fruits and added a new animal or fruit to the already long list?

These days, if I don’t remember to write things down, there is a 100% chance that they will be washed away from my memory, making sure to come back and haunt me in the future.

Once I make my lists, I need alarms on my phone as back up. What if I don’t remember to see the list?

And this is how it is now, my life, trying to ‘create’ memories of simple, everyday things.

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Memory wiped clean

Certain combinations do not work well together. I am a self confessed obsessive compulsive cleaner; combine this with a dash of forgetfulness, and you have a crazy woman running around in a clean house looking for things.

Recently, we revamped our furniture. The kids are grown up and less likely to spill, soil or tear or doodle on the walls. All these years, our upholstery was in various shades of brown. Shades that effectively camouflaged chocolate and all other kinds of stains.

When our new furniture arrived, I put away everything and arranged all the pieces. A place for everything and everything in its place. Or so I thought.

This last week, I had to burn some music on a DVD. This was my last thought before I slept that night.  I put a reminder on my phone for 6 am in the morning.

When my phone reminded me, I walked straight to the cupboard where the blank DVDs are kept.

Unconsciously, I had gone to the place where the old cupboard containing the DVDs used to be.  In my state of semi-sleep, I was shocked. Where was the cupboard? It took a few seconds for the fog to clear. Oh yeah, new furniture and all that. I sighed in relief.

But then, a few seconds later I realized that I could not remember where I had kept the DVDs.

So opening and closing cupboards, the  crazy hunt began. So many things neatly organized, but no sign of the DVDs.  I had to go buy new ones.

     Courtesy – http://www.openclipart.org

A few days later I found them safely tucked away, in a carton, with other cables and remote controls.

What’s to blame ? My cleaning skills or my memory. I decided to blame it on trying to start a day without coffee.