My Trip Down Memory Wane

Learning to Live with Middle-Age Memory

A few years ago, I began routinely finding myself unable to recall the names of people that I know. Two clear factors emerged:

1. The amount of time I’ve known someone.

2. The amount of time that has passed since I’ve last seen or thought about that person.

For instance, I’d turn 137 before ever forgetting the name of Brennen Heath, the kid who grew up across the street from me in Paterson, New Jersey (or his old phone number, for that matter) but I frequently forget the names of people I know in Beacon, New York, where I’ve lived since 2014. I still know who they are and what they’re good at — I just can’t cough up their name. (And the harder I try to wring it from my brain, the less likely it is to come.) When these lapses really bug me, I resort to Facebook and scroll until the name jumps out like a jack-in-the-box. Because I’ve never actually forgotten those names so much as they’ve become inaccessible. A similar phenomenon has taken hold in other areas — movies watched, countries visited, restaurants dined in — in which older experiences and information are nailed down like bad hotel furniture, while some of the newer data graduates and then goes off to college in The Cloud, but can still be pulled back down into my brain.

In yet another tormenting development, I now consistently experience what I’d best describe as “buffering.” Like when I walk into my workroom and it takes me a moment — buffering, buffering — before I remember that I just needed my screw gun. I don’t mind this as much because the not-knowing is brief and I can feel the answer coming, like a Frisbee I’m about to catch, and I’ve never not remembered just what the hell I came in there for.

I brought this up with my doctor. After patiently listening to my concerns, her eyes narrowed on mine.

“Wait, how old are you?” she asked in her stern, British accent, opening my folder.

I spat out my age and she sighed, shaking her head before informing me that I likely suffer from a condition called quinquaginta unum, also known as being fifty-one years old. I was relieved to know that my experience is typical, and I’d like to accept this signpost of aging—the way I’ve accepted crow’s feet, or reading glasses, or relentless solicitation by the AARP—but this change scares me because it’s damn near impossible not to wonder if it’s a lame and overly-long prequel to dementia.

And dementia is my worst nightmare.

(Were this not a polite column, I might even say that dementia is my worst fucking nightmare.)

Worrying about dementia at all caught me off guard because I’ve always, objectively, had a superb memory. During the Dark Ages of the 1990s, back before I owned a cell phone, I carried dozens of phone numbers in my head. Whenever I hang or am reunited with old friends, I generally recall more (and in greater, embarrassing detail) of what we did together. Even when booze was involved. And ever since the dawn of Trivial Pursuit, I’ve aced trivia games because of the inordinate amount of useless information that had just never moved out of my brain and gotten a damn job.

Along with commercial jingles from forty years ago — “Lite BRITE making THINGS with liiiiiiiiightttt…” I STILL remember every single word to supergroup Asia’s self-titled album. (I’m not proud of that. But back in 1982, after I had just played the crap out of AC/DC’s For Those About to Rock, Asia had palate-cleansed its way to becoming, briefly, my favorite band. In my defense, I was eleven, and it was the heat of the moment.)

So now, my regular inability to call up newer information feels like I’m Usain Bolt and can no longer run to catch the bus. And so fretting over dementia, well, it’s just a jump to the left.

Recently, however, Jeopardy! champion Ken Jennings — who is three years younger than me — had this to say about middle-age memory:

“Your memory works just fine. It’s not a broken hard drive. If you’re not remembering stuff, it’s because you don’t care about it.”

I found this so comforting that if I ever saw Ken Jennings, I’d walk right up to him and ask to shake his hand (so long as I could remember his name) to thank him for saying that. Because what if instead of losing my memory, I’m actually becoming…a memory connoisseur.

What if I’m becoming more discerning in what I retain, only storing on the local drive what’s truly important — instead of the land-line phone numbers of ex-girlfriends; or the Yankee starting infield from 1979. Because I’ve never forgotten the name of a close friend. Or been unable to produce important information needed in the moment. Besides, why worry about down-the-line dementia when other deadly menaces like colon cancer, or mass shooters, or Marjorie Taylor Green are all waiting in the wings today?

So now I try to instead be thankful that I do in fact remember all that I truly need. And as for the buffering, well, our Wellness-Industrial Complex relentlessly reminds us to practice…

(I SWEAR to you — on the perseverance of Liberal Democracy and Western Civilization — that I am BUFFERING RIGHT NOW, but here comes that Frisbeeeeeeee…)

Mindfulness!

Holy crap. Mindfulness.

Since I’ve already learned that buffering can’t be sped up, I try to let those brief intervals serve as reminders to be present in the beauty of each ephemeral moment (which are relentlessly running out on all of us) until I snatch that Frisbee and remember that I really just needed my goddamned socket set.

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