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PatchWork
by Joyce Whitis |
Patches
It was one more in a long string of embarressing moments. The nice looking lady across the room kept glancing in my direction and then looking away at the shelf of books in front of her. Many who had come for the reception of a political figure at Buy-the-Book on the square, stopped to exchange "hellos" and made meaningless remarks, meant to pass the time until the central figure appeared through the front door.
I caught the lady staring and I stared back with a weak smile. In my mind I thought, I know her what in the heck is her name! She manuerved around the stacks of books and I, intent upon some mindless chatter with a wait-this-one-out fellow greeter, smiled my very best and grabbed her hand which was already extended toward me. She spoke first, "I am so sorry. I know that I know you but for the life of me I can not remember your name!"
I let out a deep sigh of relief. Was that all! She couldn't remember my name? My gosh, I thought she was a spy for the sherrif's office or maybe the highway patrol or something. I had been trying to remember all the bad things I had done and silently suffered over which one she knew about. Would she just jump up before the crowd and state that I had run that stop sign on Fry and Harbin when no one was looking? Did she know about the time that I took a whole bag full of peanuts from the barrel at Town and Country Bank because I wanted to give Elvis a real treat? Or the suckers? Maybe it was the suckers. When I make a bank deposit, I always grab a few of those little candy suckers. I pretend that they are for Elvis or maybe a great-grandson who happens to be with me but really I like the little suckers myself.
No, none of those sins had got me in trouble, she just couldn't remember my name. Well we were just about even, although she had given me a real scare. I couldn't remember hers either, and she really did look famaliar. Within a few seconds we were laughing and joking like old friends and maybe we were, who knows?
It is a sad fact that with age comes failing memory. Faces in a crowd all sort of swoosh together at times so that the familiar ones disappear and merge with the unfamiliar leaving one standing there asking the simple question, who was that? Such stuff seems impossible to the 50 and 60 year old as they watch their older acquaintances wander in and out of vacant places in their memory banks.
A husband asks his wife of 50 years, as they leave a reception, "Who was that dark haired woman you were talking to?"
"My lord, John, that was Rachel. You've known her for 20 years!"
"Oh was that Rachel? She must have dyed her hair."
And the wise wife lets it go because she knows that if she lives long enough and Rachel does too, she might be asking someone else, "Who was that dark haired woman?"
Generally of course it is the people that we only see maybe once or twice a year that we truly stumble over when we try to call them by name. And no wonder!
Consider the fact that each of us, if we are at all active in this society, meet dozens of new people every week and renew old acquaintances monthly or yearly. Besides that we encounter countless persons at businesses we frequent, restrauants we patrionize, and other meetings both local and throughout the state.
Our minds aren't just programed to remember names but also dozens of phone numbers, fax numbers, and e-mail addresses. We need to know our social security number, driver's license number, calling card number, cell phone number, and the corresponding numbers of our spouse, all our offspring and probably our grandchildren. This is to say nothing of bank checking numbers, and passwords for bank ATM cards and 3 or 4 major credit cards. Also passwords to access information for banks, credit cards, and other private information such as internet access.
In addition we will get failing marks for not remembering the birthdates of all our children, our children's spouses, our grandchildren, our grandchildren's spouses, and our great-grandchildren. Surely we can keep stored in our memory banks the street addresses and phone numbers as well as the fax and e-mail addresses of all of the above.
And then there are the sizes! Dress sizes, pants sizes, shirts, blouses, and shoe sizes. With the growing crowd these sizes can change daily!
"What a nice pair of Nikes, Maw, only thing is they are two sizes too small!"
Well what the heck? I guess I can exchange them for the right size. The only thing is....where did I buy these shoes?