Marie’s Memory

In “Anecdotal Tales”, stories will be told. Some will be fun, some will not. Some will be great, some will be less so. Some stories are true, some are merely possible. This is one of them.

Marie’s Memory

“I ought to be ashamed, but I never remember anything whatever except humiliation. If by some lucky chance there had been humiliation mixed in, I could remember every detail of that day for a thousand years.” -Mark Twain

Marie left her home and pulled the door shut behind her.  As she walked down the twisting pathway to get to her car, she put her hands to her pocket and realized that she had forgotten her car keys.  She turned to her house, a frown on her face, and wondered how she had managed to misplace her keys.  Upon returning to the front door, she realized that she had forgotten to lock it.  This was a typical day for Marie.

Marie was known for many things.  She was kind to animals, she liked skipping rocks in lakes, and she was generally a pleasant person to be around.  However, if there were one grave flaw that people remembered about Marie, it was that she was terribly forgetful.  If the cats, bunnies, and parrots under her supervision hadn’t liked her so much, they would have resented the many times that she had forgotten to refill their food.

Her problem only became more obvious when Marie was in a social setting.  She would have to be introduced to unfamiliar people several times before their names stuck in her head.  If for some reason, her friends decided to play any sort of board game involving memorization, Marie was guaranteed to place last.  She began to describe herself as being similar to goldfish.  The aquatic animals had to relearn everything from scratch once a few minutes passed, and Marie knew how they felt.

All the tricks and tips had been tried out.  Marie had attempted using rhymes or developing a stringent routine.  Sometimes they would work, but she often felt like there were one or two details that were falling out of her head with every minute that ticked by.  Marie knew that memory was one of the first things to go and she feared that old age would hit her particularly hard.

Then, one morning, it happened.  Marie woke up, paid her rent, fed the animals, and grabbed her car keys.  She checked her phone for messages, put it in her purse, turned off the coffee maker, and locked the front door behind her.  She dropped off her rent check and placed a few letters in the mailbox.  As she exited her car onto the proper street to get to work, Marie started to realize what had happened.  All the years, all the tricks and plans, and the problem had simply fixed itself.  Marie had forgotten how to be forgetful.

Advertisement