What did I come over here for?

I can't remember, so I guess I'll sit down and write a post about it.

~*~*~*~*~

Everyone has photographic memory.

Some just don't have film.

~ Stephen Wright

That's me. No film. To borrow another simile, I have a brain like a seive. I barely remember what I had for breakfast this morning, and don't ask me what I did last weekend. Or last month. Or what I got for Christmas. Or what year any one of my children was born. Or who their godparents are. Or what I just walked into this room to do...

I might be able to drag a lost item up out of my memory banks if there's something remarkable that impressed itself so solidly on the interior of my brain that it's practically visible on the exterior. But, otherwise, I've learned to only fumble around for a minute or two before I ask the children what it was I was trying to remember. Sometimes they remember, sometimes they make something up. I don't know what the ratio of truth and fiction is, though. How would I?

I have a collection of excuses for my memory handicap, good for a variety of situations, depending upon how believable I need to be or how silly I don't mind appearing...

I can't think/remember because:

* I have early onset of senility (One of my favorite excuses and especially believable to the teen and twenties set)

* I'm distracted by the multitudinous responsibilities of my station (Feasible excuse, esp to other mothers, I think)

* Humidity curling my hair affects the pattern of my brain waves (Anyone who already thinks I'm an airhead believes this one)

* I'm suffering early onset of menopause (Other menopausal women understand that mushy-brain syndrome is really a symptom; young women squint with worry; kids don't have a clue what you're talking about; men just roll their eyes)

* I was out in the sun so long weeding the garden that someone else was told to weed -ahem!- that my brain is literally fried (Kids just roll their eyes at this one -- no way they'll be guilted out)

* I'm buzzing on coffee, and can't gather my thoughts because they're flitting around my brain on caffeine fizz (That's believable, isn't it?)

* Caffeine withdrawal headaches make it impossible to think straight (Just as believable, surely!)

* I was up all night with the baby (Would work if I had a baby at the moment...)

* I was up all night with insomnia (Elicits scores of advice on how to conquer insomnia, but only a little sympathy for how it makes me forget all my children's names -- and how I can't remember whose clothes are whose when I do laundry)

* I was up all night trying to load pictures onto Blogger (Gets total sympathy from other bloggers, but mystification from just about anyone else)

** There are probably more, but I can't remember them.

*** Definition for my children: film - n. A thin sheet or strip of flexible material, such as a cellulose derivative or a thermoplastic resin, coated with a photosensitive emulsion and used to make photographic negatives or transparencies.

****Translation of the definition: It's the stuff you used to put in old-time cameras to make pictures -- you took it out of the camera after you filled up its quota of pictures and took it to the photo processing center to have it developed. It's akin to a memory card, sorta. So, the analogy here would be the comparison of bad memory and very little memory on your memory card. Or having a faulty memory card that undependably recorded the pictures you took with your digital. Get it?
* From the archives: May, 2009