I’ve got a pretty bad habit of remembering things. Not entirely intentional, I read somewhere that Albert Einstein once said, “Never memorize something that you can look up.” Recently I’ve used this as a justification for my forgetfulness, but throughout my life I’ve let things slip, much to the dismay of various wives, girlfriends and daughters (not all my own).
The other night, my own personal haziness came into sharp relief. I was in a bar discussion (as I am wont to do).
After I had professed my daughter’s age, I was then prompted for how long I was married. And then I was asked how old I was. Rather than letting them off the hook, I asked them to do some boozy math.
During the requisite pause, I did some thinking on it. Like some weird algebraic equation x+y-c did not equal z. I started rethinking it – double checking my work if you will.
I couldn’t figure out where I went wrong until I determined that I was quoting an incorrect age when I was actually (previously) married. How or why would I have done this? Strange?
My initial stance was that I was married at age 25. After I checked my numbers (carry the two), I realized that I had gotten married at 23. Young, YOUNG marriage. When people that age tell me now that they’re going to get married, I immediately think, “Oh wow, too young”. But I never apply my own personal experience to that. Obviously I don’t even remember that I got married that young. Perhaps fatherhood wipes some memories clean? Or was that a part of the raucous 90’s that I was just too…..altered….to remember? (Amid the nose ring and tattoos?)
At my nephew’s birthday party the other day, I was talking to one of my brother’s friends and she said, “Yeah, I’m glad to have gotten to have fun before having all our children”, which I guess I can’t relate to on some level. I was married young, but I don’t feel like I consciously “missed out” on my 20’s. If any thing, my early 20’s were a mishmash of bad decisions as it was, so I’m lucky to have survived most of them.
My father always carried around index cards with lists of things he needed to remember. We would meet up, and he’d whip out an index card and discuss all the things on the list that he NEEDED to cover, then once we’d finished, he put them away. As of late, I almost feel like I should be doing that. But, of course, I have a smart phone. So I let Google Calendar take care of most of the heavy lifting. I refuse to let “The Big Blue F” handle birthday reminders. In fact, in one of my periodic disconnects from that site, I deleted my birthday.
Sure enough, my birthday rolled around and there were NO well wishers clogging up my page with birthday status updates. I thought it was curious rather than disturbing. I don’t think any less of my close friends for not remembering since I can hardly remember those things myself (see above for lifelong habit of). But curious nonetheless. I’ve taken to sending cards to some of my friends – something I rebelled against for the longest time as something that was “expected” of you rather than doing it just because it’s a nice thing to do.
Still working on that.
