Now What was that Again?

There is this character called Mr Twiddle in Enid Blyton’s books. He is a kind-hearted soul but very forgetful and his wife is driven to distraction by his actions. He is  a bit like a grand-dad in early dementia.

I used to think that it is impossible for Mr Twiddle to constantly fall over the cat or put the stick of butter into the oven instead of into the refrigerator, until I found myself putting the open carton of fresh milk into the larder and the car keys in the shed. I am not denying that memory lapses come with age, but then again, how is it possible that my friends in their 70s and 80s can remember things with such precision when I find it hard to remember what I ate for supper even?

It is recorded that medieval Irish literature preserved truly ancient traditions in a form virtually unchanged through centuries of oral tradition back to the ancient Celts of Europe. Oral tradition and oral lore is cultural material and tradition transmitted verbally down the generations. These stories are transmitted in speech or song and may take the form, for example, of folktales, sayings, ballads, or chants. Thus even without a writing system, it is possible for a society to transmit oral history, oral literature, oral law and other types of knowledge across generations. Even the oral tradition of passing on tunes is ongoing in Irish Traditional Music.

I have certainly never been engaged in any form of serious oral tradition. At most. it was a nursery rhyme here and there and a proverb or two.

I remember studying about short term and long term memory power in a psychology class. Either I was too distracted by the lecturer’s good looks or I merely retained the facts for the purpose of doing well in the paper, I cannot remember much of it today. But one I think that still lingers on my mind is creating a to-do list to sharpen memory skills.

So I started a to-do list. This to-do list was painstakingly entered into my filofax (that was before smart phones made an appearance). Alternatively, I would stick post-its on the fridge or soft board. Once I had completed the things on my to-do list, I would cross them out, sort of a first- in- first- out system. It worked perfectly for me and I did not have to carry too many things in my head.

Another thing that could have caused my memory power to go into lazy mode is my personal mantra of ‘living for today’. Even if I had won the most coveted award for being the greatest woman ever lived, I would have revelled in the euphoria of that experience for just a while and then moved on because there is so much to life than resting on yesterday’s laurels. This goes for bad experiences as well. Someone once said the best way to punish your enemies is to forgive them because life is too short to hate and so we march on into the future, consciously not letting bad experiences gnaw us from within.

Some people that I have met can remember every little milestone their children had achieved. I am totally hopeless in that area and that is why I find photo albums and scrapbooks most helpful. Just the other day I met a man who said he cut a tree in our backyard twenty years ago. Now if he had been cutting trees for the most part of his life, how could he have remembered which tree he had cut in which year?

There are many people who love to retell their stories. I find that there are more talkers than listeners everywhere I go. Almost everyone seems to want to talk about himself and expect others to listen. I have heard some of them tell the same story over and over again, to the same group of people or to different groups of people. So maybe this is the secret to increasing memory power – repetition.

Just when I thought that maybe I was losing ‘it’, wikipedia threw some light into the occasional lapses in memory which do not necessary mean signs of serious mental deterioration or the onset of dementia. This includes: forgetting where you left things you use regularly, such as glasses or keys; forgetting names of acquaintances or blocking one memory with a similar one, such as calling a daughter by another daughter’s  name; occasionally forgetting an appointment; having trouble remembering what you have just read, or the details of a conversation; walking into a room and forgetting why you entered; becoming easily distracted and not quite being able to retrieve information you have “on the tip of your tongue.”

Games that activate the brain should help. So maybe it is time to reach for the crossword puzzle or Sudoku.

Now who is Mr Twiddle that started me on the writing of this article?

Source: http://www.nst.com.my/opinion/columnist/now-what-was-that-again-1.539177