Defragging the Brain

”The existence of forgetting has never been proved:  We only know that some things don't come to mind when we want them.” ~Friedrich Nietzsche

Did you ever walk into a room and forget why you walked in?  That’s how it begins.  Then one morning, you open the refrigerator for some orange juice and find the sponge you were looking for last evening when you did the dinner dishes.  So far, it’s all a laughing matter, until one day, your husband tells you that in your hurry to keep an appointment that morning, you neglected to flush the toilet.  It never occured to me that the day would come when routine tasks once performed by rote, like locking the front door or sweetening the coffee, would require that I stay focused on the task.

My memory is sometimes so retentive, so obedient, so dependable; at other times, so bewildered, so tired, so not there.  Why is it that I can remember that Hattie McDaniel was the first black woman to win an Academy Award, but can’t tell you the name of any actor or actress who won an Oscar in the past few years?  And, how can it be that I remember my friend’s dress and her date for the senior prom fifty years ago, but can’t remember that I promised to bake a cake for her party next week. I can sing along to any Hit Parade song or Broadway Show from the 40’s through the ‘80’s.  I can even tell you the name of every song on every Neil Diamond album.  But when I read the headlines from the 2009 Grammys, my brain asks, “Who is Rihanna or Chris Brown?”

Wouldn’t it be nice if we could buy more memory for our brains, like we do for our computers?  I figure that the human brain is like the hard drive on my computer.  We should be able to clean it up, reorganize it, and throw away the clutter.  Then we would have made room for the new information that comes at us daily.  At the very least, we need to defrag the files, so that we can find the information more quickly. 

It’s so embarrassing when someone mentions that cute blond from Laugh In and I say, “I know, the one from Cactus Flower, the one who’s had too many lip injections.”  Sometime between the posing of the question and 3:00 in the morning, I’ll remember the name Goldie Hawn and be embarrassed that it took so long to make its way from my brain to my mouth.  I figure a good defrag of my brain would speed up the process by at least a few hours.

          One thing I am sure of.   Once something happens, it can’t unhappen.  Our brains have a way of holding on to the good times, the funny times, the sad times, all the events that make us who we are.  It saves and organizes all the facts we have learned along the way, all the music we have heard, the sunsets and storms we’ve seen and the fragrant smells of flowers, bonfires and cinnamon toast. We call this memory.  Memory is the compartment of our brain that stores the past, all the things we never want to lose. Where I left my cell phone doesn’t seem to fall into that category.  

          Scientists tell us there is a physiological reason for failing memories past age 50.  Without getting too technical, short term memory is stored in a different part of the brain than long term memory; and the short term area is less stable, more likely to be affected by medications, distractions, and lack of concentration, even something as simple as a lack of Vitamin B-12.  There is limited space in the area where short term memory resides, so every time you add something to an already full short term memory space, an older fact is deleted

One report suggests that when you have something very important that you really need to remember, you should say it out load a couple of times.  I’ve tried it and it works.  But now people are staring at me and wondering why I’m talking to myself in Publix.  Not only talking ... I’m even repeating myself.  But I don’t care.  At least I’m not forgetting to pick up the oatmeal.