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The hidden benefits of absent-mindedness
BY CHRIS WRIGHT
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Chris," I said to the guy named Mike, or maybe Mark. "Nice to meet you." I offered him my hand and smiled. The smile was not reciprocated. Instead, Mike/Mark stood there looking affronted, as if I’d just prodded his solar plexus and said, "You smell like sausages." I was baffled. The guy did have a somewhat sausage-y aroma to him, a not unpleasant blend of pork and rosemary, but I hadn’t mentioned that. The problem, as a friend informed me after Mike/Mark had slunk off to avail himself of the cheese cubes, was that we’d met before. Many times. "You are an unremarkable, forgettable person," I’d just told him. "You are dead to me." Though not in so many words, of course. Mike/Mark shouldn’t have felt bad. I forget everything. Last week, I watched Independence Day for maybe the fourth time, and I still couldn’t remember what happened at the end. Which isn’t such a terrible thing. There is something regenerative about chronic amnesia. You get to watch your favorite movies as if for the first time, laugh at jokes you’ve heard before, make the same friends over and over — at least until they get huffy and refuse to talk to you any more. But even then, you soon forget the unpleasantness and move on, a newborn of sorts, open to all the wonders of an absorbing and unfamiliar world. "Blow those aliens up, Bill Pullman! Give ’em hell!" Absent-mindedness runs in my family, as does its evil twin, Alzheimer’s. Both my grandmothers succumbed to the disease. My mother was recently diagnosed with it. The doctors gave her some medication to help ease the symptoms, but she keeps forgetting to take it. She thinks that’s funny, and I guess it is. There is something inherently slapstick about forgetfulness. The lost-glasses gag: "Oh, they were on my head all the time!" The saucy-joke-e-mailed-to-the-boss bungle: "Whoops!" The chicken-in-the-oven blooper: "My house! My house!" Okay, so it isn’t always funny. Only sometimes. My maternal grandmother, Flo, was a big fan of horror novels, books with titles like I Eat Your Leg and Werewolves in Love. When we were kids, Flo would make my sister and me cups of viscid tea and regale us with tales of ghosts and ghouls. In one, she’d seen a witch — pointy hat and all — shopping for bacon at her local corner store. As Flo began her descent into senility, though, the line between fact and fiction blurred — her stories became more reportorial, more mundane. The doctor sliced his hand off while treating her bunion, stuff like that. Once there was a motorcycle crash on the street where Flo lived. In her version of events, she’d picked up the rider’s helmet, the head still inside, and handed it to a police officer. Within the space of a year or so, Flo had begun to weep and pee herself and stare into space for days on end, but it was fun while it lasted. Senility, of course, is a terrible, terrible affliction, but it does have its benefits. The last time I was back home in London, I ran short of cash, so I asked my mother to lend me £200, which she did. An unscrupulous person might have just kept quiet after this, in the hope that she would forget the loan, but not me — I am better than that. A week or so later, I saw my mother and said, "Do you have that £200 you owe me?" She’s not so far gone yet that she wasn’t able to recall that there was something about £200 she was supposed to remember, and was happy to repay the debt. My brilliant scheme fell apart, however, a few days later. I’d met my mother at a pub. She doesn’t drink much these days, so she was in good spirits. After she’d downed maybe three halves of lager, we started to reminisce. "Remember we used to go on long walks?" she said. Yes, I do. "We were friends, weren’t we?" Yes, we were. There were a few moments of silence before my mother spoke again. "We were friends, weren’t we?" Yes, yes. "Remember?" I do, I remember. "We used to go for long walks." And so on. Call me a sentimentalist, but it didn’t feel right to keep my mother’s money after that. I did, though, continue telling her it was her turn to buy the drinks. I might be sentimental, but I’m not stupid. I don’t know, exactly, how Alzheimer’s is passed from generation to generation, but I do take comfort in the fact that it seems to afflict the women in my family rather than the men (sorry, Sis). And yet I’m not so sure I’ve been let off the hook completely. I seem to spend an awful lot of time these days lingering at the doorway to my apartment, running through a mental checklist: keys, phone, money, pants. And people have started to notice. I recently called a woman with whom I’d had a first date the night before. As I was going about the business of charming the bejesus out of her, she interrupted me mid-sentence. "Are you serious?" she said. "You told me that story twice last night." Oh. But there are those who have it worse than I. I know a man, a local restaurateur, who had a tumor removed from his brain. To this day, he cannot recall faces — not even those of his wife and kids. A friend of mine read about a guy who was so forgetful that he’d eat a meal and then, minutes later, forget that he’d eaten. Not only that, he’d actually feel hungry again. He had a forgetful tummy. I wonder if there are people out there who have the same reaction to sex. Or love. What if we could forget those who have broken our hearts? Maybe the Greeks had it right. We have to drink from the waters of Lethe — the river of forgetfulness — before we can live again. The night I met my mother in that pub, we’d talked a little about my father, who surely did break her heart. "You shouldn’t have married him," I said, shocked to hear the words coming out of my mouth. She looked at me and smiled, and there was sadness behind it, something she was remembering. "But then I wouldn’t have had you." That’s a moment I hope I never forget. Chris Wright can be reached at cwright[a]phx.com
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