Forgetting to forget

      Minding my own business, the clerk at the medical facility asked me a question.

   “Social?” she said, as in what is your Social Security number?

    I have had a Social Security number for as long as the Earth has been rotating, which is a long time.  I have answered the question as many times as Kim Kardashian  has been on magazine covers and then some.  So it came as a surprise that when I thought I was firing up the neurons in my memory bank, there was a complete shutdown. I drew a blank. It was as though the brain crashed like a cheap computer.

    “Social?” the woman repeated.

    I gave her my telephone number just to stall her and gain some time. She scowled. I panicked. How is it one can forget something so intimately known as a Social Security number? It’s like forgetting which hand is right or which one is left, or the name of your spouse or significant other.

    (Marital tip: If you ever call your wife by another’s name, say some old girlfriend she knows about, immediately keel over into your corn flakes as though you had a stroke. There is no other way to survive this mishap.)

    I recall waking one morning and before breakfast was over I had put the juice on the stove and the coffee pot in the refrigerator.

    (No one was around to see that so please keep it under your hat.)

    I eventually recalled my Social Security number, but I was not pleased. The experience caused a dark pall to drape the day. My three-pound brain was obviously rusting up like some tricycle left out in the rain.

   Later in the day I went to a grocery store and leaving the store I ran into an elderly woman pointing her car keys in the direction of the parking lot. Oddly, she had that Zombie vibe about her, eyes glazed, a stumbling walk. The only thing missing was the blood, the torn clothes, the growling and a TV contract. I mean she wasn’t really a Zombie, after all. She was a nice blue-haired old lady.

    We made eye contact and I suddenly wondered if Zombies always bite their prey. I worried about this because I was out in the open without a crossbow or a machete and my shirt collar was unbuttoned at the neck. I wondered why Zombies bite normal, healthy people, anyway. What’s up with that? Then it occurred to me that misery does like company, so Zombies must be so depressed they can’t stand for other people to be normal.

    The Zombie woman said: “I can’t find my car,” as she frantically pressed her key waiting for that annoying tweaky sound car doors make when they are opened electronically. For some reason her dilemma pleased me to no end. It gave me a way to redeem myself for my earlier mental slip concerning my Social Security number.

    I looked at the woman carefully and decided whether she was a Ford or a Chevy or whatever. These associations take years of practice, so don’t try this without training. She was obviously a Buick type and when I noticed a Buick I suggested she point her gadget that way and sure enough the tweaky noise gurgled and the woman appeared refreshed and no longer a Zombie.

     I have seen old people numerous times lose their cars in parking lots. It’s a national disgrace. Every day across this country old Zombies are stumbling across parking lots looking for their lost cars. In their minds, some of them believe someone has actually moved their car, which makes them feel important.

    People lose track of things all the time. Forgetfulness and distraction are a major part of our lives, young or old. I’ve heard of a woman finally finding the carrots she needed to cook for dinner in the dirty laundry basket and another woman finally locating her full cup of coffee inside one of the kitchen cabinets after looking for the coffee all over the house.

   I’ll deny this ever happened but traveling to night school in Wichita one evening, I was so distracted I was at the toll booths heading into Oklahoma before I woke up as to where I was.  It was like the car had a mind of its own and I was merely along for the ride.

   I think some people practice forgetfulness. Politicians, for instance. Doesn’t seem to matter how many times they are crushed in an election, some of them keep coming back again and again, as though the past never happened. In truth, these folks ought to go out and get a real job, but I suspect it’s easier to live off campaign contributions as opposed to hourly wages. These politicos have an advantage over the rest of us. They can easily dismiss the drubbing they received in the last election, then turn around and start campaigning all over again. They act like mindless penicillin that keeps chasing hard-to-kill bacteria, bobbing and weaving all over the place.

    Forgetfulness is not all bad. It gets a bum rap, but it’s a skill we all need, since being able to wipe the slate clean can be a real advantage.

    Imagine if you could forget all the bad stuff you’ve had to endure? All those bad jobs, those heartbreaking relationships, rotten vacations, creepy neighbors, all that over ripe fruit, not to mention your first six marriages, your dumb-as-a-boot brother-in-law and those debts that never seem to go away?

     My mother used to say “you’d forget your head if it weren’t attached to your neck,” as, I suspect, many mothers do.

    I am reminded of forgetfulness all the time. I get a phone call from the daughter and she says something like “wish me luck,” and I say “for what?” and then she goes into this long-suffering Shakespearian speech, with all the associated drama and amped up volume, about, “I told you, this was the most important thing in my life. How could you forget? What is wrong with you, Dad?”

    “Well,” I reply, “perhaps you never told me about this in the first place.”

    “I did, I did, remember?”

    “No, I don’t remember. Maybe you told it to your other twelve Dads.”

     “No, I didn’t, you’re my only Dad, and I told you.”

     “Maybe it was a boyfriend with a name that sounds like Dad. Thad, perhaps, or Brad, or even Vlad. Are you dating a guy named Vlad?”

     “No,” she blurts out. “I can’t believe you forgot after I told you.”

    This exchange happens at least once a week and I am aware that the daughter speaks with hundreds, if not thousands, of folks per week and can easily lose her father amid the hubbub of a busy life. So I forgive and move on.

    Forgetting is not a disease. It is simply an act of life like losing socks or the small spoons from the silverware drawer. Someday I expect to enter a room and find all the lost socks and missing spoons aimlessly dancing as though they hadn’t expected me to return home in the middle of the day.

   Rather than worrying about forgetting, I will take a day off soon and recite my name, my address, my phone number and Social Security number over and over like war prisoners in movies do, giving only minimal information to the enemy.

    If you follow my lead, make sure you practice in front of a mirror, otherwise you may forget what you are doing and why and wander out of the house and into a parking lot. Then you’ll wake up and wonder how you got there.

    If this happens to you, beware of blue-haired old ladies. Button your shirt. They may not be who they appear to be.