Remember What?

Remember What?

At worst my body is run by an organic computer, at best it is a creation more fantastic, more complex than any scientist can ever fathom and somewhere in between lies a storehouse of my life; emotions; experiences; facts; recorded events and so, so much more.  Yet it never seems to run the way I want it to or recall things when I need them.

I sometimes mix images from the past and blend them together like two pieces of different jigsaws that have been cut by the same pattern shape-wise of pieces or I place events in the wrong order.  Not as they happened in time, but as I recall them in my mind.  I cannot blame age as the catalyst for this disorder, although it doesn’t help and my mind is definitely slowing.  I seems that I am run by a free spirit that defies orders from me and goes it’s own sweet way.

When I finally went to university as a mature person in my early forties the need for recall became a lot more pressing, but once again my brain would go it’s own sweet way.  I tried to write an exam essay on Cardinal Wolsey and probably only managed to dredge up a tenth of that which I thought I had remembered and what I wrote down was more likely a jumble rather than a well-ordered answer.

I re-sat my Maths GCSE in 2011 alongside many of the Year 11 students I had been teaching in other subjects. It was then I realised at a very late age comparatively about neural networking.  I even conquered Algebra to the point where I came to love it, but it took a lot of practice to recall even the basics.  I suppose motivation was a major factor and yet even then my memory was far from complete.  I learnt as much about memory and recall as I taught in those years and my honesty was rewarded but the children’s response to me. 

Like anyone who appreciates the mind and all it’s beauty, ability and enigmatic variances I fear losing it.  I have noticed a marked decline in short term memory; whilst I can recall conversations held over fifty years ago.  So I have a solution…live to be a hundred and thirty to remember what I did yesterday…