All posts tagged: I Forgot

I’m 50 and I Can’t Remember Jack Shit

When I was a kid, super memory was my superpower. I was the youngest in my nuclear family, the second-to-youngest in my extended family, and I was regarded as a rememberer-in-chief by all my relatives. Trip to the grocery store? “Nancy, we need apples, tomatoes and cereal,” Mom would say, and I’d reel off the list to her until it was all in the cart. “Nancy, what was the restaurant where we ate in the Adirondacks?” Aunt Margaret would ask, and I’d answer, “Keyes Pancake House” before the question was out of her mouth. People marveled. “You never forget anything.” It was easy, this remembering of things. What was the big deal? I’d think to myself, with all the self-awareness a nine-year-old girl could muster. Later, when I was teenager and perfecting random cruelty directed at my mother, I’d openly mock her for her inability to remember things. “Did I see that movie? Did I like it?” I’d taunt her, after she’d ask me just those questions about some film I’d mentioned. How could someone …

6 Apps to Remember Stuff and Get Comfy in the Cloud

By Marci Ikeler

In this age of constant alerts, badges, and notifications, it’s increasingly difficult to filter signal from noise. How do you remember what’s really important when the flow of information never ceases? In our busy modern lives, it’s way too easy to let essential material slip through the cracks. The good news is that there are a plethora of tools available to help manage the onslaught. With a little planning, technology can become an extension of your mind, improving your memory and helping you maintain focus. As a digital fanatic, I’ve created a system that allows my entire brain to live in the cloud. A brief introduction: I’ve worked in digital since the late ‘90s, back when people told me that the internet was a passing fad. Today, I run a social media agency – and to say that our work moves fast is putting it mildly. The good news is that by putting our memories into the ether, we become smarter humans, with an enhanced ability to understand and process information that our minds alone …

Can I Learn to Accept My Chemo-Induced Memory Loss?

By Betsy Hnath

I am a woman who forgets a lot. Every day I misplace keys, call one of my children by the wrong name (I’ve been known to throw in a dog’s name if I’m honest), and I lose track of what I’m talking about mid-sentence. It would be easy to blame any number of reasons for my absent-mindedness: three kids who keep me running in multiple directions, the day-to-day financial and emotional responsibilities of a household of five, my own, natural tendency to lean toward ADHD, along with work, friends, and exercise. For years, I somehow kept all those balls in the air, even adding new ones without a shrug. One or two might slip, but for the most part I was an artist at keeping who, what, where’s, and when’s moving seamlessly, without the use of a notepad or smartphone reminders. All of that changed when the one thing I hate to remember made me forget just about everything else: cancer. A little over five years ago I was treated for breast cancer. I wasn’t …

What is the Lifespan of a Memory?

By Jennifer Ha

Memory is a funny thing. Why do we remember the things we do, and how is it that people remember the same event differently? How does one person remember and another forget? I’ve always been fascinated by this, and so when my kids were very young I began an informal experiment by asking them at different stages about their memories: “What’s your best memory? What’s your worst memory? What’s your first memory?” Even with their young brains, there are some things that they have already begun to forget. Which leads me to one of my biggest fears: that I will begin to forget too — their stories, my stories and my family’s stories. And if I forget bigger events, what will happen to those little moments? How my mother laughed and my father smiled? And what my daughter’s first hug felt like? This melancholy musing has led me to ask: What’s the lifespan of a memory? Family stories seem to be the easiest thing to keep alive. I keep dredging them up and telling them to my kids …

Margit’s Note: What Was I Going to Say?

By Margit Detweiler

The brain is a weird place. We instantly forget the name of someone we just met, but we remember every damn lyric to “Hotel California.” (“What a nice surprise, bring your alibis.” ARGH!) We rely more and more on our cloud-synced calendars, to do lists and electronic data to keep us current, and if that cloud ever crashed, our whole world would fall from bytes to bits. I am somewhat terrified of losing my memory. I remember seeing my great aunt delicately picking up a spoon to use with her salad and then putting salad dressing on her hamburger and being quietly explained to that she had lost her ability to remember how to do things. (To be fair, given today’s grain-filled salads, she might not have been so off.) As a six-year-old, I was scared to imagine that in the same way I was learning things, I might at some point unlearn them, too. I’ve often thought that there’s only enough genetic data for one sibling to get all the memory juice. For example, my sister has a photographic …