The
Absent-Minded Memory Expert
I come home from my accounting
job to my beautiful wife, Maria, who is a well-known memory expert. She appears
on national TV and instantly memorizes entire books, the names of huge
auditoriums full of people, and texts written in any of 30 foreign languages. As
I walk in the door, careful not to trip over a neat stack of stuff in front of
it, she is rummaging through drawers, cupboards, and closets.
“What’s the matter, Hon?”
I ask.
“I lost my keys,” she says.
“I can’t imagine where I might have put them.”
I see a towel sitting on the
table. I pick it up, uncovering a set of keys. I give them to Maria. She breaks
into her beautiful smile, a smile I can never get enough of, and gives me a
grateful hug.
“I’m so glad you finally
came into my life,” she says, and she rushes off to the TV studio, closing the
door carefully. I notice a note near the knob that says, “Don’t slam.”
I go to the kitchen and find a
can of soup. Maria has taped a discount coupon for the next can of soup onto it
so that she won’t forget to take the coupon to the store when she needs to. I
pour the soup into a microwave dish and leave the coupon on the counter where
she will be sure to see it before she goes shopping.
The next day is Saturday, and
Maria and I have time to sit on the porch, drink coffee, and chat. ”How did
your show go last night?” I ask her.
Her eyes sparkle. “Our guest
was a Russian chess expert,” she says. “The two of us competed to see who
could memorize a chapter of a chess-technique book fastest. Guess who won?”
“But you don’t know a thing
about chess,” I say. She nods and smiles. “What language was the book
written in?”
“Russian,” she says.
“I can’t wait to see the
tape of that show,” I say, imagining the thunderous applause she must have
gotten.
“Oh no,” she says. “I
forgot to bring it home with me. I’ll call the studio.”
“Let me do it,” I say.
“What’s the number?”
“1-800-555-6210,” she
immediately says. “Oh, wait, it’s Saturday. Call Brian, the producer, at
home. It’s 555-7623.”
I get no answer. “Call his
cell, 555-7779,” Maria says.
I become curious. “How many
phone numbers do you have in your head?” I ask.
“If I told you, I’d be
bragging,” she says, smiling again. She picks up our emptied cups and heads
toward the kitchen. “Be right back,” she says.
“Why don’t you wait until
you’re ready to go inside?” I ask.
She
says, “If I wait, I know I’ll forget.”
I call Brian, then sit down and
wait for her to return. I see a note on a table near me that says, “Take
meds.” I look up at the light switch and see another note that says, “Turn
off at night.” I decide to hire a maid for Maria's birthday present. She
deserves that, and more. Much more.
Maria returns. “Do you
remember what I said when I proposed?” I ask her. She rattles off the whole
spiel word-for-word.
We were married four months
ago, and we’re still learning important things about each other. “What’s
the most absent-minded thing you ever did?” I ask, gazing at the pile of odd
items she has placed in front of the open door so that she will be sure to
remember them the next time she goes out.
Maria laughs. “You have your
heart set on embarrassing me this morning, don’t you?”
“Please?” I say.
“OK, OK,” she says. “As
you know, I don’t wear shoes around the house.” She wiggles her bare toes.
“Well, one day, I had to go grocery shopping fast and then make it to a
doctor’s appointment. I put on my tennies, went shopping, and brought home a
bag of food. Then, quick as a wink, I changed to my good shoes and ran off to
the doctor’s office. By the time I got back, I was really hungry. So I ran to
the fridge to start fixing lunch. There, in the fridge, were my tennies.”
“Oh, my God!” I say.
“Where were your groceries?”
“Can’t you guess?”
“In your shoe closet?”
“You got it.”
We decide to take a shower
together. I wash her gray hair, then my own. I’m so much taller than she is
that she can’t reach the top of my head.
My hair feels as dry and
brittle as hers does. I say, “I remember when my hair was soft and shiny
brown. Was yours brown too?”
“Yes,” she says quietly.
“With red highlights.” Her playful smile disappears. She becomes silent,
thoughtful. She gets out of the shower, resisting my attempt to hug her.
My heart begins to race.
“I’m sorry,” I say, trying to remain calm. “I didn’t mean to make you
think of anything sad.”
She takes my hand. “Never be
sorry for making me think — of anything.”
“OK,” I say. My heart slows
down, and I notice that her hand is small and cool.
“In fact, thank you,” she
says. “You made me understand something.” She dries off and goes into the
bedroom. Once my body is also dry, I follow her. I sit on the edge of the bed
with her and wait.
“Until I was finally
diagnosed with and treated for bipolar disorder at 41, I was severely
depressed,” she says.
“I knew you had bipolar
disorder, but I didn’t know you were diagnosed so late. That must have been
hell.”
“Thanks for understanding.
Much of my depression was caused by my absent-mindedness. I’d lose jobs
because I’d lose my keys and be late for work too many times. I’d leave huge
amounts of money laying around, and somebody would steal it, of course. I’d
lose good friends because I’d forget dates with them, or be hours late —
same thing. I lost hours of my life driving all the way back home to get
something important that I’d forgotten.”
I say, “People laugh about
absent-mindedness, but I guess it can be really destructive.”
“Yes, it can,” Maria says.
“It embarrasses you and makes you look really stupid. My absent-mindedness
almost ruined my life several times. The first time I watched the movie,
‘It’s a Wonderful Life’, where Jimmy Stewart loses all his bank’s
receipts and feels so bad that he almost commits suicide, I was right there in
his shoes. I cried for days.
”My absent-mindedness bugs
other people too. I park in the wrong space, forget to give the grocery clerk my
coupons until after she’s rung up my bill, walk into men’s rooms, forget to
bring my wallet to the doctor’s office (where they need me to show the medical
insurance card in my wallet), and call one person asking for somebody else I
know. I would have walked into the wrong apartment once if the guy’s door
hadn’t been locked. And don’t ask if I was drunk. I’ve never drunk a drop
in my life.
“One morning, I forgot to
turn on my phone bell, which I’d turned off the night before. I left a message
for a lawyer to call me, and then waited all day for my phone to ring. At
5 pm., I called the lawyer’s secretary and chewed her boss out for not calling me.
‘You don’t answer your phone,’ she said. He’d tried to get me three
times. All day long, it had never occurred to me that my phone bell might still
be off.”
She blinks several times, takes
a deep breath, and goes on. “By the time I was 30, I was convinced that I was
a stupid, useless human being. I couldn’t keep a job — not just because of
my absent-mindedness, of course; bipolar disorder also makes it hard for people
to hold down steady jobs — and I couldn’t keep a man, though that was
probably because of my hot, bipolar temper. I started to feel that I had nothing
to give, to contribute to the world, and I fell deeper and deeper into
depression.”
“Until you began taking
Lithium,” I say.
“Thank God. Then one thing
led to another. The medicine relieved my depression, my self-confidence went up
and, one day, I realized that I could recite an entire book of the Bible without
a mistake. I’ll never forget that day.”
“I bet you won’t,” I say,
grinning. She swats me angrily on the arm, but then she laughs.
“So I proceeded to memorize
the entire Bible, and it was easy. Easy! I finally realized that there is
something I’m good at. Ironically enough, this absent-minded bipolar is good
at remembering things.”
“I can see why it took you so
long to find your skill. You, and everybody around you, had labeled you as
somebody with a bad memory.”
“Right. My psychologist
straightened me out about that. Absent-mindedness doesn’t have much to do with
memory. It has to do with stress, especially if you’re stressed-out by bipolar
disorder, low self-confidence, or the people around you who are pushing
deadlines and demands on you.”
“I should have known that,”
I say. “It makes a lot of sense. I’m sorry if I’ve been impatient with
your absent-mindedness in the past. It’s basically the same as your brilliant
memory. It’s just the other side of the coin.”
“Yes!” Maria says. “I
just have a different kind of mind. I’m sort-of like an autistic savant.”
“Or a horse that can
count,” I say. She swats me again.
“You do have a unusual
mind,” I say.
“And that’s wonderful,”
she says. “But, until I was 55, life was hell for me, because I thought I was
good for nothing. I thought about suicide over and over.”
“I’m so glad you didn’t
follow through,” I say.
She takes my hand again. “You
know why I didn’t?”
“No. Why?”
“Because something inside me
— or from heaven; I don’t know — kept telling me that when I got older,
after my hair had turned gray, dry, and brittle, I’d finally, somehow, be
happy.”
I sit here with my mouth gaping
open, looking at my amazing wife.
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