Published: July 03, 2008 04:36 pm            

Simply Sandy - July 2, 2008

The saying goes something like this: “Of all the things I’ve ever lost I miss my mind the most!” Have you ever had those days? When you go to call someone’s name you’ve known for years and it just isn’t there? You can recall who they are married to, their children and where you were the first time you met them but yet you can’t recall their name.

But then when you aren’t thinking about it anymore or maybe in the middle of the night, the name or thought pops into your mind. Glad to have the thought back, you have to wonder, am I the only one like this? Is this condition common to man? Where do those thoughts go?

Our brain is like a computer. We know the information is there. The computer doesn’t forget when it has that momentary pause, when we say it “froze.” We usually reboot the computer and give it time to reset itself. Have we overloaded our circuit boards when we have those frozen moments? Do we need to reboot? Could we if we tried? Sounds plausible.

Every day is a new day, one filled with possibilities. We need that sleep. Seems every problem and every child’s fever is worse at night. Dawn brings with it hope.

What can we do in the meantime? Much like exercising our bodies we can exercise our minds. Like the old catch phrase – if you don’t use it, you lose it. Use your brain! Make it work for you. We need to stop, look and listen. How many times has Wally said something to me and I haven’t heard him? Oh, I was looking right at him but my mind was on other things, maybe a TV program or something else that had taken me totally away. Often times he has to repeat himself because I wasn’t focused on what it was he was saying. Or maybe later I could remember tidbits of what he said but not enough to repeat it or not enough to fully know what it was he was talking about.

Not only do we need to stop, look and listen but we need to get organized. Having a fixed location for keys, wallets, phone numbers and important stuff will keep us from searching high and low for those items. Just the few moments it takes to decide to always put your keys on a stand by the backdoor will keep you from having to “find” them every morning. It really works. Like Mom used to say, a place for everything and everything in its place. I know it sounds boring and mundane but it really does work. It could very well be instead of having a memory problem that we are just not paying attention.

Regardless of which the case may be we will probably still have those moments when we can’t just recall a certain fact. But it’s there, we haven’t forgotten. That tidbit has been tucked away for safe keeping and when we least expect it will return.



Simply Sandy is written by Sandy Jarrell and appears the first Wednesday of each month. Simply put, it’s Sandy waxing wordy once a month about life as she knows it. Jarrell is a native and life-long resident of Coleridge and a librarian at Ramseur Public Library.

        

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