On Forgetting

I forget things.

Faces. Names. Recipes. Locations. Dates. The date. Past events. What I was just doing. Entire events from only two days ago. What items are in what cabinets in my kitchen. What you said yesterday. What I said thirty seconds ago.

Events that happened five minutes ago are sent into the same overlapping jumble where my memories from 8 years ago reside. There’s a cloud in my head where events and impressions mix, creating stories that may or may not have happened, faces that may or may not exist, and places that aren’t quite arranged the way they are in reality. When I leave a task, expecting that my future self will come back to finish it in five minutes, it’s like pushing a raft out to sea, hoping it will float to a specific person on the other side. Sometimes it's infuriating. Sometimes it's scary.

This is part of who I am. It’s taken me a long time to balance accepting that while still not using it as an excuse to give up on improving my memory or a reason to hate myself for making so many mistakes. Maybe you're in the same boat in one way or another. There are methods for improving your memory (which maybe I'll write another post about later), but they don't work overnight, so in the meantime, here are some strategies I use to manage my forgetting. Maybe you'll find them helpful.

Methods for surviving with forgetfulness:

Leaving a physical reminder. Whenever you move away from a task-in-progress to do something else, leave a physical object in a place you will see it. For example, if you’re making pancakes and the doorbell rings, leave the spatula on the coffee table so you’ll see it when you set down the exciting package the post-person brought you and go flip the pancake before it burns.

Alarms. Pizza needs to cook for 15 minutes? Set an alarm. Plan to write for an hour and then go to the store? Set an alarm. Have an important job interview? Set four alarms. It might feel like coddling yourself, but often you'll find that the act of setting the alarm helps you remember, and you'll go back to that pizza seconds before the alarm goes off.

Signs. It’s stressful to look through every cabinet in your kitchen for the salt. It might feel childish to put little signs on your cabinet doors saying what’s inside, but if it works, do it. You’re home should be the least stressful place.

Apologies. Forgetting someone’s name is not polite. Leaving a task half-completed at work is inconsiderate. Most people assume that if you forget something, it’s because you didn’t care about it, or them. Use specific and detailed apologies that are more than just the word “sorry.” Make sure your facial expression shows that you’re not being sarcastic. It’s important that people don’t think you’re a jerk because you’ll also need…

A safety net of people who understand. Depending on others requires trust, and you’ll need a lot of it. You’ll need people you can trust to remind you of things, point out things you forgot, and fill in the gaps in your memories. For that last one, sometimes what they tell you will clash with what you remember; you’ll literally need to trust these people more than your own mind. Choose your friends carefully.

Self-forgiveness. Like I said earlier, it’s easy to feel useless when you burn your oatmeal literally every morning for two weeks. It’s easy to feel like you’re broken and incapable of functioning in society. Remember that all humans depend on other humans to survive. Remember that everyone makes their own kinds of mistakes and (hopefully) has coping mechanisms to compensate. Remember that modern society has insanely unrealistic expectations for functionality, so don’t use those expectations as the metric by which you judge yourself.

If you can remember that, forgetting won’t be so bad.

How To Snatch Food From The Kitchen Without Getting Caught

Humans need to eat food. Sometimes, humans want to eat food even when they don’t need to. Sometimes, those humans share a kitchen with someone who doesn’t want that food to be eaten. The culprit could be your significant other, your parent, or a roommate, but their motivation for stopping you is always one of the following:
*They want to save the food for a special occasion.
*This particular food is actually an important ingredient for something they plan to cook.
*You specifically instructed them (in a moment of desperation or madness) to prevent you from eating the food, no matter how much you might beg or plead, since you lack the willpower to stop yourself.
*They want the food for themselves. (This is the most primal of the motivations, and, for that reason, the most likely, even if they claim one of the above.)

Regardless of which of these applies in your particular case, you need not feel guilty for snatching food. This is natural human behavior, survival of the most fit. If you are able to snatch food from the refrigerator without your competition catching you, that makes you the fittest. Food snatching is simply nature taking its course (pun intended).

Here are my tips for winning the title of fittest.

1)  Know your strengths and weaknesses. How much can you eat? How fast can you eat it?
2)  Know your competition’s habits and schedule. Any spy will tell you that this is the key to any espionage: know where your target is in space and time, and how long they are going to be there. How long are their showers? Could you consume an entire pie in that amount of time AND hide the evidence?
3)  Eat strategically. Your primary goal is to prevent your competition from ever realizing that you snatched anything at all, and the best way to do this is to nibble along the edges of anything too big to make disappear entirely. Instead of cutting a square piece from a half eaten cake, cut a long, thin piece from along the already cut edge. In some cases, one bite from every container in the refrigerator will draw less attention than five bites from one container.
4)  Minimize noise. Restrain the urge to scarf, gobble, or burp. Chew deliberately. Open doors slowly. Avoid noisy doors entirely. Maybe set a spoon aside somewhere, since opening the silverware drawer can be quite loud.
5)  Hide the evidence. Put the half-finished jello bowl in the back of the refrigerator. Rinse off the spoon. Bury any wrappers under the trash in the trash can.
6)  Move the food onto a smaller plate if you’ve eaten half of it. This makes the food item look just as big as it did before in proportion to the plate it rests on. This also works with zip-lock bags, Tupperware containers, and even cups.
7)  Pay attention to your breath. Smelling like peanut butter when there are five peanut butter cookies missing will blow your cover immediately, no matter what plate the cookies are on. Brush your teeth, or just keep out of smelling range of the competition.
8)  If caught, make outrageous lies. Crafty lies will make the competition suspicious. Ridiculous lies will distract them. Therefore, blame the family pet(s), the neighbor’s children, ghosts, trans-dimensional warping, spontaneous casserole combustion, etc.

Confidence

A MacDonald's drive through. I roll down my window and hand over the money.

"Umm, I-I think that's enough?" I stammer.

The twenty-something with greasy hair stuffed under a rumpled cap gazes back at me.

She seems equally unsure about the existence of the money.

After a moments pause, she cautiously lifts it from my hand.

She avoids my eyes, just as I avoid hers. She counts the money and puts it in the drawer.

I shift uneasily in my seat. I reach up to scratch my head, but change my mind and put my hand back in my lap.

Announcing the amount of change I've earned, she holds it out.

With a start, I realize that she wants me to take the money from her. I rush to cut the awkward silence short and almost knock the change from her hand.

"Have a nice day." She says. She attempts a nervous smile.

She glances at me for a millisecond, uneasy, then spins back to her register.


Trust me friend, I speak with experience when I say:

People feel more comfortable around you if you act with confidence.



The reason for this has eluded me for most of my life. However, after the experience conveyed above, I have a hypothesis which I believe is logical.

Every person on earth knows, deep in their subconscious, that someday, the world will end.

That's right.

And this knowledge creates a tiny anxiety in the back of their minds. Like an itch on the back of their neck. Or a dog barking incessantly four houses down while they are trying to do their taxes. The anxiety bothers them, but not quite enough for them to know it's there.

When they converse with someone who behaves with confidence, they get the impression that this person knows that the world won't be ending just yet. They gather that this person must have somehow come upon knowledge of the inner workings of the universe. Therefore, that nagging anxiety about the end of the world is momentarily put to rest.

However, when they speak to someone like me, who acts uneasy and confused, that nagging anxiety is confirmed. They begin to worry that this person might know something they don't.

Fear builds up inside them. Perhaps the world will end now... or now! Goodness!

They long to speak to that confident person again so they can stop imagining the parking lot opening up and swallowing the entire restaurant.




So that's how it happens. I'm pretty much positive. Maybe.

World Domination

I am often guilty of critiquing the behavior of those ambitious souls trying to conquer the world in cinema.

"You put them all in the same prison cell?"
"Why would you have such a deep hole in your evil lair?"
"There's no reason to go on gloating for so long!"

So now I will put my keyboard where my mouth is.


30 Rules I Will Follow When I Dominate The World


1) My evil lair will have a licensed clinical therapist on staff.

2) I will not allow any canopies, fruit stands, or hay bails to remain anywhere near my 100 story tower off doom. When I push you, you WILL hit the pavement, and I will hear that wonderful *splat* sound.

3) I will increase the morale of my minions by using a bright and cheery color palate for my barracks' interior.

4) I will never murder anyone with children. Those cute little bundles of joy have a tendency to become vengeful when they grow up.

5) Speaking of children, I will do my best not to procreate. And if I must, the little brutes will be brain-washed thoroughly to prevent them from betraying me the moment some dashing hero type comes along trying to stop me.

6) Any adviser who says "Nothing can stop us now!" will be shot.

7) I will never, under any circumstances, turn myself into a snake, dragon, or giant insect. A snow leopard is a possibility, but only after careful consideration.

8) Also, growing twenty times normal size is usually a bad idea. The bigger you are, the easier it is to ram a ship into you.

9) I will enslave entire tribes of natives *before* I rip up their forests to fuel the fires of industry.

10) Pacts or deals with demons, ghosts, witches, or anyone more evil than I are strictly off limits. Doubly so if they involve the state of my eternal soul in any way.

11) If any heroic type challenges me to a mono-e-mono duel to prove that I'm not a coward, I will command my minions to blast him into oblivion. Perhaps I AM a coward. But I'm alive and he's dead. That's got to count for something.

12) If ever I suspect that rebellion is afoot amongst my subjects, I will not become paranoid and I will not persecute those whom I mistrust. I will throw a grand party and give possible turncoats extra large pieces of cake.

13) Of course, those pieces of cake will be poisoned.

14) All of my power will never ever be vested in any animate or inanimate object that is not myself. (I don't care how pretty the blasted ring is.)

15) My enemies will never be considered dead unless I personally witness their death. Or, even better, witness their cremation.

16) No self-destruct mechanisms.

17) Evil people make bad allies. Therefore, I will ally myself only with infinitely loyal goody-two-shoes. Infinitely loyal and infinitely dense.

18) My evil lair and the vicinity thereof will have absolutely NO precipices. All windows will be shatterproof. No pits of doom. No volcanoes. Those who stand in my way will die from bullets or not at all.

19) My entire ventilation system will be electrified. Any courageous rebel who's seen Mission Impossible will be fried.

20) If there are any prophecies on which my victory is contingent, I will hire a grammar and rhetoric scholar to analyze the prophecy for possible loop-holes. (For instance, if no MAN can defeat me, but I'm completely vulnerable to WOman, I need to know about that.)

21) The hero, his comic relief, his love interest, his faithful dog, his cute critter, and his great-great grandfather/mentor will not be imprisoned in the same cell. Or even the same prison.

22) I will not engage in a musical number before striking the final blow against my enemy. Shoot first, sing later.

23) If my doomsday device requires a certain period of time with which to complete its task, I will always always always LIE and tell the heroes that they have much more time than they actually have.

24) I will not allow "harmless" natives to continue living near any of my important installations. Even if they look like teddy-bears. Especially if they look like teddy-bears.

25) Overconfidence IS a weakness. I will hire someone to insult me for thirty minutes everyday.

26) Computers do not need self-awareness or the ability to make decisions on their own. If that means I have to do math in my head, so be it.

27) I will keep a healthy sense of perspective. If some goofy flying kid feeds my hand to a crocodile, maybe I'll let it go after the first few years of seeking revenge.

28) There will be railings on all my cat walks.

29) My minions will wear helmets which display their entire face. Not only will they probably live longer, but I won't have pesky heroes trotting around stealthy-like in disguise.

30) In the unfortunate event in which I fail and a hero defeats me, I will not throw my life away for one final, foolish, and probably fatal blow. I will scamper off, build up an army of mutant alligators, and try try again.