scatterbrained me

I have an astonishingly keen ability to forget things.

It’s not about stuff – I’m good with stuff. I generally don’t misplace my keys or lock them in my car (knock on wood), and I don’t have problems like “oh, I just found this $20 bill in my pocket, I’d forgotten all about it!” It’s more like I forget information.

My brain is so weird and spotty.

I can remember the address of nearly every house I’ve ever lived in, and the phone numbers. I can also remember the phone numbers of the people I knew when I lived there. But I can’t remember the name of someone I met yesterday. I regularly see people I know from my past, and can’t remember who they are. This has been a problem, especially lately when I’m running into a lot of people from high school, because I don’t remember them and they get kind of hurt by that. It’s nothing personal. I just don’t.

The other day I freaked my mom out when we were talking about the time that Ginny and I “stole” a bunch of artificial flowers from Wal-Mart. I can remember the skirt I was wearing that day, and the exact details of how the whole incident went down, but I have no clue what year it was.

I’m really bad with time. I often say “a few days ago” when what I really mean is April. I’m the friend who is always late, in part because I tend to get lost, but also because I have no concept of how it feels to spend a certain amount of time doing something – say, ten minutes. If someone asks me how long ago something happened, I always answer, but I usually make up the answer. I’ll say “a half-hour ago” but it could have been yesterday.

I’m pretty good at remembering the dates of birthdays and anniversaries, but when they actually roll around I forget. I can remember that a friend’s birthday is on March 28th, but when it’s March 28th I don’t remember that it’s a significant day. If that makes sense. So I don’t often give people cards or gifts because I forget.

When I’m singing, I can picture how the notes look on the page, and where they are in relation to each other, and that’s how I usually hit them all. But sometimes I don’t remember the title of the song.

But sometimes I do.

I have this random, haphazard memory, but I also have excellent attention to detail. I can’t find anything in my office, but I can organize spreadsheets like nobody’s business.

I don’t know. Maybe the same things in my brain that are responsible for my vivid imagination and creativity are also responsible for my tangential, stream-of-consciousness manner of speech, and for my tendency to be neurotic and scatterbrained.

I imagine it’s probably kind of frustrating sometimes to know me.