North Star Writers Group

The older I get, the more notes I write to myself. I write so many notes that by the end of the day some days I find myself with a serious case of writer’s cramp. Forgetfulness, as I understand it, is a by-product of growing older, like buying plaid pants and worrying about how many miles-to-the-gallon-of-gas your car is getting. Notes are my way of dealing with forgetfulness.

Face it. If you are an older individual, you forget things.

Like maybe you are sitting in the living room watching TV and suddenly you remember you have to do something in the basement. So you race down the stairs to do it and by the time you get there you have forgotten what it was you thought you had to do.

Generally speaking, the notes I write to myself at age 66 aren’t anything that could be mistaken for vintage Ernest Hemingway or John Steinbeck. They are usually terse, to-the-point messages.

“Take out the trash,” is a Batz classic. Ditto for “Feed the dog,” and “Mow the lawn” and “Call Ed.”

I’ve had the “Call Ed” reminder sitting on my desk here at work for six months. And I have every intention of calling Ed – as soon as I remember which Ed I am supposed to call.

My wife Sally isn’t the least bit forgetful. Her mind, as she so often tells me, is a proverbial beartrap. She’s especially deadly when it comes to telephone numbers. All she has to do is hear a telephone number once and she will remember it for something like 110 years.

“You don’t happen to know so-and-so’s phone number, do you?” I ask. Then she rattles it off like maybe she just called that person 11 minutes ago.

In my defense, I don’t forget everything. I can remember the combination of the lock on my high school locker: 7 left, 24 right, 14 left. I also have retained the first name of my first girlfriend’s mother’s aunt, the score of almost every Ohio State-Michigan football game and the license plate number of my first car - a snazzy, 1961 Oldsmobile.

But please don’t ask me what I had for dinner last night because chances are I’m going to draw a total blank.

Looking back, I guess I should have bought that little sign I spotted a couple of months ago at a flea market. I mean, they only wanted a buck for it and the message was certainly worth, um, remembering.

It said: “Old age can cause forgetfulness . . . or even forgetfulness.”

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