Sans Fig Leaf

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"Holes in my head"

23 January, 2001

You've heard the saying, "If it wasn't attached, he'd lose his head?" That's me. Absent-minded doesn't begin to describe how bad I am. I have, on more than one occasion, asked, "Have you seen my glasses? I've been looking all over for them." Only to be told that I was wearing them.

Although I often joke that it is senile dementia, I know it has nothing to do with my age. The first time I remember doing the glasses trick was when I was eight years old. It was very embarassing. I've been losing my keys, misplacing my wallet, walking out of the house without my coat or shopping list for years and years.

But there is something about it that's changing with age. I have developed lots of tricks and strategies over the years to combat the problem, but it's almost as if my forgetfullness is developing its own tricks to circumvent my memory strategies.

Recently I lost a notebook. Now, Michael and I are both papyrophiles -- we like paper so much that we'll use the flimsiest excuse to buy a new notebook or some new stationary or something similar. It doesn't matter how many scores of three-ring binders, spiral notebooks, pads of various sizes--all full of paper-- we have in the house. If we find a cool new one in a store, we're liable to buy it. And I write everything down. That's one of the tricks I've had to learn, to get around the forgetfulness. I take notes on all sorts of things, so I can remember things I meant to do, stuff I wanted to get, et cetera.

So this notebook was full of all sorts of information I needed to use later. But it's just one of literally hundreds of notebooks in the house. Once I realized it was missing, finding the correct one wasn't like looking for a needle in a haystack, it was like looking for one specific straw of hay in a whole field full of haystacks.

Usually this particular notebook rides back and forth to work with me in my backpack. If something occurs to me related to home, writing, or one of my hobbies while I'm at work or in transit, this is where I write it down. The notebook wasn't in my backpack. I searched all the usual places where it ought to be. No luck. I searched odd corners of the house. No luck.

Michael tried to help me look for it, but it wasn't distinctive looking on the outside. "A grey notebook," I said. "Exactly like this one, but with different information inside."

I decided that I must have left it at work. But the following Monday I searched my office to no avail. So then I was trying to remember what was written in it. I could reconstruct a tiny portion of it, but there would be time lost, if nothing else. Among other things it contained about half of a short story I and a friend of mine have been collaborating on which hadn't been transferred to computer.

One tiny corner of my brain had suggested, early in the search, that the notebook was in "the other backpack." What other backpack, I wondered? The little voice from the foggy corner of my brain didn't know.

So off and on during the next week I kept searching. I checked anything I could find in the house that resembles a back pack. Nothing. Sometimes the corner of my head would mention the other back pack again. Some times it would give me a hazy picture of the notebook with some writing utensils and a notepad or some other paper items. If I concentrated really hard, I got an impression of some kind of mesh or netting.

Our laptop case has a bunch of mesh pockets in it, so I went and checked there. But there was no notebook. The voice in the foggy corner muttered something about "purple or blue... or some color like that" and shuffled off into the darkness.

Saturday was our monthly writer's group meeting. I spent a few hours cleaning the house and gathering things we need for the meeting. We pass out clipboards and paper to folks so they can take notes while they listen to what's being read. Michael and I have assembled quite a collection of clipboards. I counted them up and we were missing three. Two of the ones we were missing were plain, cheap, pressboard models. But one was a very cool purple translucent plastic one which was one of my favorites.

Michael and I searched the house. I found one of the missing pressed board ones. I vaguely remembered suspecting that a one-time visitor to the meeting some months back had walked out with one. That accounted for all the clipboards except the purple one. We didn't find it before people started arriving for the meeting.

On Sunday there was housecleaning, laundry, and some chores we should finish before we fly to California this week. I kept hoping that either the purple clipboard or the grey notebook would turn up. But I had no luck.

Monday evening, after Michael went to work, I poked around in the house some more. I really wanted to find the notebook before we left town, because I will be seeing my collaborator at the convention we'll be attending.

The voice in the corner of my head suggested "the other backpack" again. I wracked my brain, trying to figure out what it was I was vaguely remembering. The voice, apparently realizing I was close to an anuerism, added, "Christmas vacation."

Ah ha! I thought. I've been taking at least a week off for Christmas for six or seven years, now. One of the things I usually do during the vacation is completely clean out my backpack, emptying all the pockets and side compartments. I also use the Christmas vacation as a convenient reminder to bring home some of my personal things that accumulate in the office. There must have been a pile of stuff I'd taken out of the backpack and not put back in. Probably up in the computer room, tucked out of site during the clean-up before the party.

I dashed into the computer room and searched. As I failed to find such a pile, I realized I had already looked in all of the out-of-the way corners and shelves of the computer room several times. Dejected, I decided it was close enough to my bedtime that I should just go to sleep.

I was nearly in bed when I saw it. There, at the foot of the bed, half-buried in teddy bears, was our "overnight bag." It's a nylon carry case/sport bag about the size of a medium suitcase or one of those larger carry-ons. It has a lot of pockets and side compartments. Michael and I had packed our clothes and things in it when we went down to my mom's for Christmas. When we'd retunred home, we'd taken out the dirty clothes, the ditty bag, my medicines, and left the rest "for later."

I picked it up. It's a purplish blue or bluish purple color with green trim. In the big side compartment, the one with the mesh sides so you can see what's in it, was the grey notebook, the purple clipboard, and three of my nice translucent ink pens.

There it was. All the clues I had been trying to give myself added up. Now I ask you, how can anyone doubt my claim that my brain bears a stronger resemblance to a big hunk of swiss cheese than to a steel trap when it does things like this?