I've Still Got It...I Just Can't Remember Where I Put It: Awkwardly True Tales from the Far Side of Forty

by Jenna McCarthy

  Want to see this phenomenon in heartwarming action? Pull up a YouTube video (boringly) called “Old Man in Nursing Home Reacts to Hearing Music from His Era.” Right before your very eyes, a mostly unresponsive elderly patient practically comes back from the dead when given his favorite old-timey music to listen to. It’s quite lovely and uplifting to watch, and the best part is that the effects don’t end when the song does. After a musical interlude, you see this normally mute man, one who is otherwise unable to answer simple yes-or-no questions, actually engage in articulate conversation. (Of course, at this point all I’m doing is picturing my daughters in eighty or ninety years having “Thrift Shop” shot via a laser through their corneas and into their brains—or whatever the musical delivery system of the time is—and suddenly bursting out of their wheelchairs and bellowing, “This. Is. Bleep. Ing. Awe. Some!!!!” And then I get really sad that I won’t be alive to see it.)

  It turns out the whole my-generation’s-music-kicks-your-generation’s-music’s-ass thing is not limited to humans. In fact, interesting studies on mice have found that rodents who had been exposed to certain songs during similarly key developmental phases chose resting places playing that very music when they got older. (Mice in the studies not exposed to any music at all sought silence. Grumpy old mice!) It sounds Orwellian, but the bottom line is that in a way we don’t even get to choose the music that we like, but rather it chooses us.

  Although he’s only six years older than me, my husband was obviously listening to a very different radio station than I was during that peak formative period. To say our musical tastes occasionally clash is like saying rats and rattlesnakes sometimes have trouble cuddling. The first few years of our marriage we’d have some variation of this conversation whenever he was responsible for choosing the music:

  ME: Who is this?

  HUSBAND: Guess Who.

  ME: Um, a bunch of dead guys I’d rather not be listening to?

  HUSBAND: No, Guess Who.

  ME: I just did. I give up.

  HUSBAND: That’s the band’s name, Jenna. The Guess Who.

  ME: Well, that’s the stupidest name I’ve ever heard, so I’m putting in ABBA.

  HUSBAND: Oh God, not ABBA. Please, anything but ABBA. How about Led Zeppelin? Black Sabbath? Genesis?

  ME: Blondie?

  HUSBAND: The Who?

  ME: Blondie. You know, Debbie Harry? Of the band Blondie?

  HUSBAND: I know who Blondie is, I was suggesting the Who.

  ME: Who? You cannot be serious.

  Eventually we figured out that we both like Foreigner, Queen, ELO, and Kiss,* so we didn’t have to get divorced. But when we’re mad at each other, it’s often a race to see who can get to Pandora first and put on the other’s most-hated music. Because we’re really mature like that.

  “My Welcome-to-Midlife Moment Was . . .”

  When I had to Google “twerking” . . . DON’T DO IT!

  —CRYSTAL

  Thanks to having “tweenage” daughters, I’m at least familiar with that music scene. I’ve seen the Justin Bieber, Hannah Montana, and Katy Perry movies (and yes, I cried like a little bitch watching all three of them), and I can confidently identify which one is Demi Lovato and which one is Selena Gomez. I know every lyric to every Taylor Swift song ever written, even though I can’t help but silently mock the twenty-three-year-old’s appalling lack of perspective when she croons wistfully about “feeling twenty-two.” (Damn it! I should have titled this book I Don’t Know about You but I’m Feeling Forty-Four.) This isn’t always a good thing, of course. I’ve been busted at the gym singing along with One Direction, and once when Joe and I were driving to L.A. without the kids, we realized halfway there that we’d been listening to our daughters’ Disney Jams 15 CD on a continual loop. And singing along with it. But just the other day, the girls came home from school with a magical surprise in store for me.

  “Just a small-town squirrel,” my youngest began singing. Of course I recognized the tune immediately.

  “It’s girl,” I corrected her. She ignored me.

  “Living in a lovely world,” her sister joined in.

  “It’s lonely,” I shouted. “Lonely world!”

  They kept singing.

  “How do you guys know this song?” I asked, astounded.

  “We learned it in music class,” they informed me. “It’s awesome! We love it!”

  I started the next line for them. Now it was their turn to look surprised.

  “How do you know this song?” they demanded, with insulting emphasis on the you, I might add.

  “This song was one of my favorites when I was your age,” I told them, all nostalgic.

  They exchanged glances, clearly debating whether or not they could continue to like the tune given this new information. Finally, they caved.

  “Born and raised in self-control!” they shouted.

  “It’s South Detroit,” I interjected.

  “What?” they asked this time, exasperated and annoyed at being interrupted again.

  “That line,” I explained, thinking to myself holy shit I totally used to think it was self-control! “It’s not ‘born and raised in self-control,’ it’s ‘born and raised in South Detroit.’ Detroit is a city in Michigan.”

  “Whatever,” they said. “Born and raised in self-control! He took the midnight train going a-ny-where!!!!!!”

  I swear, this happened. My music was their music and it was all kinds of awesome. Whatever you do, don’t stop believing, you guys.

  CHAPTER 16

  Wait, Why Did I Come in Here Again?

  Remember that movie Groundhog Day? In case you’ve forgotten the plot—not because you’re old, but because who can remember a movie that came out before wireless Internet even existed?—it’s the one where Bill Murray plays egomaniacal meteorologist Phil Connors. In the film, Phil is not at all happy about having to cover the local Groundhog Day festivities for the fourth miserable year in a row. Perhaps because he’s being such an ass about the whole thing, Phil unwittingly finds himself living in some gruesome time warp where every goddamned day is Groundhog Day.

  I know how Phil feels. But instead of having to report on the actions of a “weather forecasting rat” as Phil calls his furry nemesis, my version of eternally looping-hell looks like this: Picture me, standing in my pantry—or in my bathroom or the garage or one of the girls’ bedrooms or my office—looking around pleadingly, searchingly, desperate to remember why the hell I came in there in the first place.

  “Mom!” my daughters will shout, because obviously the minute I step out of their immediate line of vision, especially if it’s to use the bathroom, they desperately need me.

  “Shhh!” I shout back. “I’m thinking.” Was I looking for toilet paper? Lightbulbs? Coffee filters? Cat litter? Did I come in to collect dirty laundry? Put clean laundry away? Clip my toenails? Brush my teeth? Remove a splinter? Get new batteries for the remote? Organize eleven years of photos into albums? Clean up dog puke? And how can I not know this? For the record, it’s not like my house is palatial or anything. How is it that a person can march very purposely the brief distance from Point A to Point B—probably banging her thigh into the corner of the sofa table in her rush to get there—and not remember a mere seven seconds later what that Very Important Purpose was?

  You can’t imagine how relieved I was when I read a recent headline in Time magazine heralding this bit of excellent news: “The Boundary Effect: Entering a New Room Makes You Forget Things.” I dug into the article, fascinated and expectant. Apparently, researchers at Notre Dame took it upon themselves to study the widespread phenomenon—it was a widespread phenomenon!—of getting where you’re going only to realize you have no idea why you’re there. It turns out the culprit is in the construction. The researchers theorize that the simple act of passing through a doorway serves as an “even
t boundary” in the mind, effectively shutting off what happened in one room and filing any related info away to open space for exciting new things to happen in the next. You know, like clipping your toenails or unearthing the Charmin Ultra. Recalling the decision to do something in the first room is next to impossible, the scientists explain, because that information has already been neatly stowed away. In other words, if I lived in giant loft, I wouldn’t even be writing about this, and furthermore, I am not old and forgetful;* I’m just exceptionally efficient at mental organization. Obviously.

  Anyway, at the end of the Time article, the author offers several (okay, two) helpful suggestions for breaking through these frustrating event boundaries:

  Mentally repeat your intention as you enter a room/announce what you’re about to do. (“I’m going to get mustard, I’m going to get mustard, QUIT TALKING TO ME GODDAMMIT GOING TO GET MUSTARD NO YOU CANNOT WATCH TV GETTING MUSTARD I TOLD YOU TO CLEAN YOUR ROOMS ON MY WAY TO GET MUSTARD AND WHO LET THE DOG IN HERE GETTING MUSTARD GETTING MUSTARD GETTING MUSTARD . . . ”)

  Move to a one-room apartment.

  I am not making this up. But still, it makes me feel infinitely better when I’m standing in the pantry/office/garage scanning the space in frustration to know that it’s all the goddamned doorway’s fault.

  It’s not just the why-am-I-in-here episodes that concern me (although since those occur almost daily, they’re by far the most annoying). I find myself forgetting things all the time lately—things I’m famous for not forgetting, like birthdays and dentist appointments and conference calls. I even showed up at the gynecologist on the wrong day not long ago—a full week before my scheduled appointment. (You want to feel like a total loser? Go ahead and beg another woman, “Listen, do you think maybe you could just take a quick peek down there since I showered and shaved and paid for parking and everything?”) I’ve left my kids’ completed homework packets on planes, permanently misplaced two beach chairs—did I just pack the rest of my shit up, shake out my towel, and walk away? I have no idea!—and honestly, if looking for one’s car keys were a book, mine would be called Where the Fuck Is That Wily Sonofabitch Waldo Now?

  “My Welcome-to-Midlife Moment Was . . .”

  When I said to my daughter recently, “Oh, honey, you know I can’t read that without my glasses.” What made it worse is that then I asked, “Can you find them for me?” and they were on top of my head. Shoot me.

  —MARY

  Here’s a good example: I like to think of myself and my husband as two of the most anal-retentive organized people I know. Well, just last week we went on a nice little wine country vacation. When we packed up to come home, Joe and I did what we always do: We took turns doing “sweeps” of every room, each invariably finding something the other had missed on the previous sweep—a phone charger still plugged in behind an end table, a single stray sock that had rolled beneath the bed. After seven or eight rounds of this, we felt confident that we had everything we’d come with and locked the door behind us. Turns out we both repeatedly failed to notice my one-hundred-dollar Sonicare toothbrush standing guard by the sink as well as my husband’s entire garment bag (stuffed with four button-down shirts, an expensive dinner jacket, and his nicest pair of dress shoes) hanging in the otherwise empty closet. It’s no wonder we have next to nothing saved for retirement.

  My mom and her friends, who are even further along the downward slope than Joe and me, are always joking about “senior moments” and “old-timers disease.” Was this the beginning, I began to wonder? I looked up the warning signs of Alzheimer’s and immediately wished I hadn’t.

  Number 1: Memory loss. This includes but isn’t limited to forgetting recently learned information, failing to recall important dates or events, and asking for the same information over and over. Just last month I made a huge production about making sure my youngest daughter had all of her things together for her after-school chess class. I reminded her three times that she had chess that day and that I’d be picking her up at the different time/place. Twenty minutes after the normal school dismissal time, I got a call from my friend Hannah. “Um, I just found Sasha wandering around campus. She said she was looking for her chess class . . . but chess is tomorrow.” [Dusts off spot on mantel for Mother of the Year trophy.]

  Number 2: Confusion with time or place. See previous illustrative story.

  Number 3: Trouble with spatial relationships. In my defense, I’ve been a klutz all my life. Surely, I wasn’t born with Alzheimer’s.

  Number 4: Misplacing things. Well, fuck.

  Number 5: Decreased or poor judgment. Do you think wearing my nightie to drop the girls off at school counts if I didn’t even get out of the car and wasn’t drunk or hungover?

  I am not making fun of a tragic and debilitating disease, I swear. I genuinely am concerned about the fact that I’m not as sharp as I once was. I know from previous research that some scientists theorize that one way to prevent cerebral atrophy is by engaging in mental exercises to enhance brain performance. The idea being that because most of us spend our days performing primarily routine, unconscious actions—brushing our teeth, driving the same route to work, cooking the same meals, yelling at our kids, and having sex in the exact same position—that we’re not exposed to enough sensory stimulation to continue to build new brain cells. By mixing things up, for instance eating with our nondominant hand, getting dressed with our eyes closed, turning the clock upside down and trying to figure out what-the-fuck time it is, mapping a brand-new route to Starbucks, or spinning in a sex hammock clad in only a pair of pasties and a smile, we stimulate our brains to build new dendrites and neurons,* and hopefully, we prevent or at least postpone age-related dementia. It’s all good in theory, but still, I highly doubt that I’ll become a regular at the brain gym anytime soon. I mean, they probably don’t even have a café or a boutique, which are the two most motivating reasons to go to any gym, in my opinion.

  Wait, what was I talking about?

  Oh yeah, forgetting shit.

  Obviously, in addition to the “natural decline in cognitive functioning associated with age,” part of the problem is that like you, I have approximately 4,593,291 things to remember at any given moment: our daughters’ constantly changing extracurricular activities, my approximate checking account balance, things we need at one of the five grocery stores I visit regularly but haven’t had time to put on the respective lists, exactly how many waffles we have in the freezer (because you would not believe the shitstorm that went down that one time we ran completely out), my last period, my next mammogram, where I left my checkbook, eleventeen billion passwords to all of the websites I frequent, the names of all of the kids in both of my children’s classes and their parents, and the perfectly timed lyrics to “Roxanne” so I can kill it on Rock Band, to name just a few. That shit takes up so much mental energy it’s a wonder I can rattle off the days of the week with anything resembling accuracy anymore. So when I call my sister and she gets mad at me because she’s at work and didn’t I remember that she changed her schedule and now she works Thursday afternoons instead of mornings, I can get a little defensive.

  “I can’t recall where I left my yoga mat, I just mailed Mom’s birthday present seven weeks late, and my cats haven’t had their shots in three years,” I tell her. “So no, I can’t possibly remember your ever-changing work schedule. But I love you!”

  (“But I love you!” is how we follow up anything remotely resembling an insult in our family. It’s the equivalent of adding a smiley face after a nasty comment in an email. “You look like you haven’t slept in a week. But I love you! ” See how that softens the blow?)

  True story: One recent morning I was idling about the kitchen, taking my sweet time packing the girls’ lunches, when my youngest padded into the kitchen.

  “Mom, did you forget about chorus?” she asked.

  Two mornings a week for the past eight months I’d bee
n waking her an hour early so she could participate in the school’s chorus practice. Not only that, but when she started, I had joined a workout group with a bunch of my friends who had kids in chorus, too, so everyone was already up and out at the same ridiculously early hour anyway. Because of this, chorus was something I knew I’d never forget.

  Except I did. I totally forgot. It wasn’t that I had my days mixed up, either, because the whole what-day-is-it-and-what-do-we-have routine never even crossed my mind.

  “Oh my gosh, what’s wrong with me?” I said, mostly rhetorically, shuffling into high speed so that she’d at least make the last half of practice and I could squeeze in a few push-ups.

  “Nothing,” my ever-sweet daughter replied, wrapping her arms around my middle. “You’re just old!”

  It’s too bad brain space isn’t like a closet you can just go through periodically and purge of the stuff you don’t need anymore. Because seriously, I have some wildly useless bits of trivia floating around upstairs that refuse to acknowledge that they are obsolete. I can list every teacher I’ve ever had beginning in preschool and continuing through college (a feat I didn’t even realize was unusual until my husband said he could probably name two, tops). The dog on The Jetsons? Astro. The cat on The Brady Bunch? Fluffy. (The dog was Tiger, if you’re wondering.) The intercom guy you never saw on Rhoda? Carlton Your Doorman, of course. The quadratic formula, the Pythagorean theorem, and an alphabetical list of the world’s English prepositions (aboard, about, above, across, after, against, along, amid, among . . .): these are all things I can reel off without Google’s help. I also still know my first grade best friend’s phone number, every word to “Miss Lucy Had a Tugboat,” and exactly what I was wearing in 1979 the first time I flew on a plane by myself.* Would you care to hear the entire “Is this a dagger which I see before me” Macbeth soliloquy I recited in tenth grade or the reading from the Letter of Paul to the Philippians I delivered during a Parent’s Day mass in third grade? Not a problem, pull up a seat and get comfy. With all of this crap crammed into my mental filing cabinet—which surely has only a finite amount of space—it’s no wonder I can’t recall the name of the guy I was introduced to fifteen seconds ago and have to use my car remote’s panic button to find the thing in the Rite Aid parking lot more often than not.