The other day as I was leaving the fitness center after working out, I took the towel that they give you when you enter, pulled my bathing suit out and tossed it into the towel container as I walked to my car to drive away with their towel. I almost got to my car.
“Oh yeah, what the heck am I doing?” I turned around, made a joke to the attendant, went to the towel depository, took my bathing suit out and tossed the towel in. Now I could go home.
If you are like me, this type of incident has probably happened to you. With age, this seems to happen more often. Throw one thing where the other thing is supposed to go.
Many years ago, there was a humorous British clip of an older woman entering her home. She puts her keys down, then sees the plants wilting, so she decides to water them. Then she looks at the mail and forgets where her keys are. She puts her glasses down to look for her keys, and when she finds them, she can’t remember where her glasses are. And so on. You get the point.
She dithers around, losing her brain. The title of the clip is something to the effect of, “This is why you feel tired and nothing ever gets done.” We get distracted. We place things without thinking. We forget.
One of my all-time favorites, which I like to admit because it’s so damn funny and shows our humanity, is when I’m done eating cereal. That means it’s time to put the milk in the pantry and the cereal box in the refrigerator. Seriously, I can’t count the amount of times I’ve either done that or come extremely close to doing that. I whack myself on the forehead with an open palm and go, “Dude, what are you thinking?”
This is mostly about not paying attention. We go on automatic pilot.
Just today, after eating lunch, I put the lettuce in the drawer where we normally keep cheese and meat and put the cheese and turkey in the lettuce drawer in the frig. Didn’t even know I did it until dinner when I went to make us salads for dinner, and I open the lettuce drawer, “Where the heck is the lettuce? Oh yeah, I bet I know what I did.” And, of course, I did. Reverse where things should go.
Knowing this about yourself and your personality and forgetfulness is good. You learn from it. After the cheese/lettuce debacle, I said to myself afterwards, “Now, REMEMBER, the next time you can’t find the lettuce or cheese to look in the other container. You probably misplaced it.” That’s a good reminder to teach you where to find things. Look at places where you tend to put things where they don’t belong.
To make this syndrome useful, you must first recognize it in yourself. Then commit to memory the goofy thing you did which didn’t make any sense. Then focus on that until it makes sense and you can find those things you need to find.
When our kids were young, one of my favorite phrases to help them find something they thought they’d lost was, “Retrace your steps.” If you can’t develop your own system for proper and safe placement of materials, you can always use that as your fallback. It works. And, maybe if you video yourself, you can take on the Brits with a humorous take on how forgetful many of us are.
“Oh yeah, what the heck am I doing?” I turned around, made a joke to the attendant, went to the towel depository, took my bathing suit out and tossed the towel in. Now I could go home.
If you are like me, this type of incident has probably happened to you. With age, this seems to happen more often. Throw one thing where the other thing is supposed to go.
Many years ago, there was a humorous British clip of an older woman entering her home. She puts her keys down, then sees the plants wilting, so she decides to water them. Then she looks at the mail and forgets where her keys are. She puts her glasses down to look for her keys, and when she finds them, she can’t remember where her glasses are. And so on. You get the point.
She dithers around, losing her brain. The title of the clip is something to the effect of, “This is why you feel tired and nothing ever gets done.” We get distracted. We place things without thinking. We forget.
One of my all-time favorites, which I like to admit because it’s so damn funny and shows our humanity, is when I’m done eating cereal. That means it’s time to put the milk in the pantry and the cereal box in the refrigerator. Seriously, I can’t count the amount of times I’ve either done that or come extremely close to doing that. I whack myself on the forehead with an open palm and go, “Dude, what are you thinking?”
This is mostly about not paying attention. We go on automatic pilot.
Just today, after eating lunch, I put the lettuce in the drawer where we normally keep cheese and meat and put the cheese and turkey in the lettuce drawer in the frig. Didn’t even know I did it until dinner when I went to make us salads for dinner, and I open the lettuce drawer, “Where the heck is the lettuce? Oh yeah, I bet I know what I did.” And, of course, I did. Reverse where things should go.
Knowing this about yourself and your personality and forgetfulness is good. You learn from it. After the cheese/lettuce debacle, I said to myself afterwards, “Now, REMEMBER, the next time you can’t find the lettuce or cheese to look in the other container. You probably misplaced it.” That’s a good reminder to teach you where to find things. Look at places where you tend to put things where they don’t belong.
To make this syndrome useful, you must first recognize it in yourself. Then commit to memory the goofy thing you did which didn’t make any sense. Then focus on that until it makes sense and you can find those things you need to find.
When our kids were young, one of my favorite phrases to help them find something they thought they’d lost was, “Retrace your steps.” If you can’t develop your own system for proper and safe placement of materials, you can always use that as your fallback. It works. And, maybe if you video yourself, you can take on the Brits with a humorous take on how forgetful many of us are.
