What an amazing thing – a memory stick! Today it is just a part of our everyday computer jargon but, viewed apart from its ICT connotations, it is an intriguing concept. It conjures up so many possibilities for us humans.
My mother was never officially diagnosed with dementia or Alzheimer’s disease, but from quite early on in middle age, I remember she had problems with memory. Later she suffered mini strokes and got worse. In time she learned to laugh at herself and at her misfortune and then life improved for her, but it took a long, long time. I wonder now and then if I might one day have similar problems. Are these things hereditary? Already I lose concentration easily, get lost, oh, so easily and turn the wrong way coming out of shops and resuming my way down the high street. So a memory stick would be really useful.
I often feel like a computer that has lost access to some of its discs. ‘Wrong disc’ I say sometimes, when I open my mouth on holiday in France and out of my mouth comes the correct word – in Dutch – when I was searching for a French one. I wish I could just plug in the right disc. Living in different cultures makes it worse, or just moving house or location in the same country. Each time we move on I need a new disc for new cultures, new language, or new places to shop, new names for neighbours, work colleagues, friends … Then the old discs fade away into oblivion and all the names, places, phone numbers and even some of the precious memories fade and then they’re lost.
Memory is a funny thing – if you manage to dig up one name that is on an old disc, or a smell – even more powerful – or a remembered long-lost friend – the rest of the disc comes flooding back. Perhaps we really are like computers … what a soul-less, awful thought … but quite useful if that memory stick worked. If I could just pop it into my poor overworked brain and suddenly all the memories would come flooding back …
My mother was never officially diagnosed with dementia or Alzheimer’s disease, but from quite early on in middle age, I remember she had problems with memory. Later she suffered mini strokes and got worse. In time she learned to laugh at herself and at her misfortune and then life improved for her, but it took a long, long time. I wonder now and then if I might one day have similar problems. Are these things hereditary? Already I lose concentration easily, get lost, oh, so easily and turn the wrong way coming out of shops and resuming my way down the high street. So a memory stick would be really useful.
I often feel like a computer that has lost access to some of its discs. ‘Wrong disc’ I say sometimes, when I open my mouth on holiday in France and out of my mouth comes the correct word – in Dutch – when I was searching for a French one. I wish I could just plug in the right disc. Living in different cultures makes it worse, or just moving house or location in the same country. Each time we move on I need a new disc for new cultures, new language, or new places to shop, new names for neighbours, work colleagues, friends … Then the old discs fade away into oblivion and all the names, places, phone numbers and even some of the precious memories fade and then they’re lost.
Memory is a funny thing – if you manage to dig up one name that is on an old disc, or a smell – even more powerful – or a remembered long-lost friend – the rest of the disc comes flooding back. Perhaps we really are like computers … what a soul-less, awful thought … but quite useful if that memory stick worked. If I could just pop it into my poor overworked brain and suddenly all the memories would come flooding back …
1 comment:
Indeed, a memory stick would help me, too. I'm forgetting appointments all over the place. Last night I forgot to tell the neighbor (who offered to pick up the girls) that I was supposed to bring a friend of my daughter's home from hockey. It didn't hit me until about 15 minutes after my daughter got home and told me all about the Sinterklaas party they had. I jumped up and asked my daughter, "Did you see Jasmine at hockey?" "Yes," my daughter said. "I saw her father there." "Are you sure? Did you see them leave together?" So we called and Jasmine was safe and sound. But, how could I forget that? My mother was also just diagnosed with dementia. It's still in the early stages, but, what if I have it, too? What if I don't? Where can I buy a memory stick, then? Great post
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