Has Anyone Seen Where I Left My Short-Term Memory?

The other day I finally found a glass mug I’d been missing. It was on a shelf behind a glass case and I must have left it there when I was dusting. I can’t remember how long ago I was dusting, but when I found it there was something growing in it that looked vaguely like a mushroom. That mug is the latest victim of my short attention span.

I began noticing things had a tendency to disappear a few years back. The first thing was my wallet. I put it down on the seat next to me at Wendy’s and said to myself I must remember this. Well, I didn’t. I got a phone call from Wendy’s not too much later saying that someone had turned it in. The manager had counted my money and searched for identification. There it all was, bless them, and they refused any reward.

If I’d done it once, I couldn’t be sure that I wouldn’t do it again, so I knew I needed a strategy. My inspiration was airline personnel who wear their name tags round their neck. I bought a lanyard from the Denver Museum of History and used it to chain my wallet to my purse. Now, when I take out my wallet, the strap snakes out with it. It means that if I drop my wallet it swings like a pendulum. But it also means I can’t lose it unless I lose my purse. One problem solved.

Losing my wallet started an uncomfortable series of thoughts, however. I checked on memory loss on the internet. I convinced myself that I was in the starting stages of some sort of terrible, progressive decline. But in my more lucid moments, I noticed that my long term memory was fine and that when I actually focused on something, there was no problem. Gradually I realized that I was not losing my mind, but I was losing my ability to multitask.

Multitasking used to be one of my strengths in a high stress job. Now I had to admit that coming into the house with arms full of groceries, my keys, and my purse was an immediate invitation to losing something. Cleaning the house with a cup of tea (or a glass of wine—you should see what grows in that!) meant that the cup got put down and became organic compost for organisms with names I couldn’t pronounce. Going to the airport and dealing with various forms and documents was a certain invitation to losing the piece of paper with the flight details. Losing things happened when I was tired, distracted, frustrated, and overwhelmed—and not all at once.

All right, I said to myself, if I can’t multitask, there has to be a strategy for dealing with this. I made a list. What was I was most likely to lose? Besides cups and glasses, it was whatever was in my hand when I was thinking about something else. That covered a lot of territory.

Understanding my tendency to lose things wasn’t easy for the organized among us. Be consistent with where you put things was Sid’s advice. OK. I was willing to give it a shot. As soon as I came in the front door, I was supposed to hang my purse on a coat rack. Well, after a week or two of very hit or miss, I realized it wasn’t going to work. I’d remember where my purse ought to be but not where it was. I even tried one of the alarms that is supposed to sound when you clap or whistle. It didn’t. Apparently I couldn’t clap at the right pitch and loudness, and my whistle was more spit that sound. But the gadget did make a nice buzz when a door slammed.

That’s when I finally got smart. If I can’t be relied on to be consistent, and if I am still going to try to multitask even when I have this new handicap, I need to outsmart myself and make it unlikely (notice I don’t say impossible) to put things down and forget where I put them.

Problem: how to find my keys. Answer: I now chain my keys to my cell phone and when I go out, I hang them round my neck. People either look at me strangely or (if they are older) they comment on what a good idea it is. I haven’t seen anyone else with it—yet—but since that time I can find my keys easily by dialing my cell phone on the cordless house phone.

Problem: what to do with the letters that I read as I come in from the mailbox and put down and then lose. This is the really the crux of the problem. I haven’t yet figured out how to deal with it. But I have made a rule that seems to be helping: anything I put down must be on a flat surface and in plain sight.

My strategies do seem to be helping somewhat, although I’m not sure how to deal with tea cup that Sid found on the pantry shelf where I had been putting groceries away. I don't remember putting it there, but I must have. I guess I must have been thinking about what to cook for dinner.