Fabulous news: our little memory lapses, known as “senior moments”, are not senior any more, they are any age. They are even hip, with a Homer Simpson name — “Doh moments”– and are nothing to do with gender or intelligence either, but everything to do with stress and busy lives. They happen up to 30 times a week, to anyone. Thank you so much Finnish researcher Maria Jonsdottir and your team of psychologists for these revelations. What a relief for us older persons who have, until now, been mocked and assumed to be losing our marbles.
We even believed it ourselves, it happens so often. I listen to my answering machine messages, I press delete, the messages have gone, but so has the memory, within seconds. Same with call waiting. Who called? Who did I promise to ring back? Haven’t a clue. I look up a word in a glossary, I reach the glossary, I’ve forgotten the word. But it doesn’t matter any more, because the darling Ms Jonsdottir says so. The brain is at fault, says she, but there’s nothing wrong with the brain. To her, memory loss isn’t a sign of decrepitude, it’s just a normal “storage failure” or “action slip”. And it’s on the increase because of our busy lifestyles and high levels of stress.
Perhaps all this will silence those show-offs with perfect recall, who are always banging on about my memory and taking its lapses personally. My mother used to think it should remember whether she wanted a cup of tea or not; and numerous others think it should remember their names and birthdays. Or that I should have told them such and such a thing, because I’d told everybody else, and I’d even told some people twice, because I tell so many people everything that I can’t remember who I’ve told what to and probably thought I’d told them already and didn’t want to repeat myself.
All these people have been insulted by my “storage failures”. To them, I wasn’t having a common memory blank, it was a personal slight — a subconscious truth surfacing and giving the game away. They are sure that I didn’t remember them because I didn’t really love them, was not interested in their lives and couldn’t be bothered to pay attention.
Well, think again, you people. Those were just plain “action slips” and nothing more. Why would one do such a thing on purpose? My friend Fielding had a terrible “storage failure” last month. He and his family set off on holiday; they’d left stinking London and three hours into their journey Fielding realised he’d forgotten his vital blood pressure pills. The family showered him with abuse, and they drove all the way back, but poor Fielding couldn’t remember where he’d put the pills. It was just an “action slip”, deserving of sympathy rather than reproach. And reproach just makes people panic, which causes more stress, which causes “discrimination or sub-routine failures”, like putting a tea bag into your case instead of your pills.
I think that once upon a time I may have written something about this. But did I? Can’t remember. — Â