Steven Ivory: Stop Me If I’ve Told You This

*Outer space is filled with stuff: Empty fuel tanks, giant O-rings, dead satellites,  crystalized human urine—that’s just some of the debris left floating in space after decades of man’s interstellar travel.

Old spaceship parts and hardened pee are not all that’s out there. Adrift among the stars, comets, and asteroids are words—sentences, paragraphs, whole soliloquies, both significant and worthless jive, in all earthly languages, tongues, and dialects.

At least that is where I believe the thoughts I and others suddenly forget, end up. You have something to say, and then, just like that, it’s lost to the cosmos.

Forgetfulness is one of the more annoying features of getting “older.” I don’t mean forgetting events from years past; I’m talking about searching for your keys while they’re in your hand; looking for your cell phone while you’re talking on it. I’m talking about thoughts in your head just seconds earlier, suddenly slipping away.

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It’s as if once you reach say, your fifties, the mind, like a computer with only so much storage space for a lifetime of information and experiences, loses the extra data. Hence, the adage, “I’ve forgotten more than you know.”

According to health experts, mental lapses are brought on because of things like deprivation of sleep, lack of exercise, and bad diet.

Another reason for our forgetfulness: we are not, to use that old self-help cliché, “living in the moment,” a term for being keenly aware of what we think, do, and say. Most of us operate on “automatic”–we give little thought to our daily activities because we’ve done these things so many times.

Example: You get in your car with plans to try a different supermarket than usual, yet find yourself pulling into the parking lot of the market you frequent most. This happened because you weren’t living in the moment–you told yourself you were headed to a different store, then immediately left it to your subconscious to get you to the new destination, instead of keeping where you wanted to go in the forefront of your thinking. You weren’t living in the moment; your mind was somewhere else.

That is how a lot of my thoughts get away from me. Even in conversation, mentally I’m often in too many places instead of focusing on the communication at hand. This, combined with whatever the hell goes down cognitively when we all reach a certain place in time, can make remembering things difficult.

When someone I know begins a story they’ve told me with, “Stop me if I’ve told you this,” I try heading them off at the pass with “Yeah, you told me that the other day,” usually to no avail. I’ll still—I mean, they’ll still find a way to continue telling that story yet again.

A friend hears me utter the phrase, “To make a long story short,” which I say often, and quickly retorts with, “Please do” or “Too late for that now….”

None of this is as serious as I make it sound. More than anything, it’s a nuisance. And since misery loves company, I rejoice in the fact that most of my friends are in the same boat. Mostly we laugh about it. Mostly.

What irks me most, though, is temporarily forgetting the names of people I’ve known for years. The conversation below is real. Names have been changed to spare feelings.

Me: “Man, guess who I ran into at the concert in the park last Friday?

Andre: “Who?”

Me: “Janna Lockhart!”

Andre: “Oh, my god.  Janna Lockhart.  How’s she doing?”

Me: “She’s great. Looks fabulous. Was there with her grandson, who is already damn near tall as I am.”

Andre: “She still married to what’s-his-name? She’ll always be Lockhart to me….”

Me: “Yeah. She said he’s doing well.  They’re still going strong after all these years.”

Andre: “That’s wonderful.  What’s his name?”

Me: “I’m trying to think of it.  And I’ve known him forever.”

Andre: “Used to work for United Airlines in Detroit….

Me: “…Before they moved him here, to L.A.”

Andre: “Right. They bought a house in View Park…”

Me: “Well, yeah, but when they first got here, they lived with his mother, in Inglewood….”

Andre: “Yep, just a few blocks from the Forum….”

Silence.

Andre: “Hello?  You there?”

Me: “Yeah, I’m here…trying to remember his name.  Before we went to concerts at the Forum, we’d go to his mother’s place and smoke weed with him….”

Andre: “His mother would smoke with us!”

Me: “Yes!”

Andre: “Man, what is that brother’s name?”

Me: “I know.  I can see him right now….”

Andre: “You see him? Where are you?”

Me: “I’m at home. Where you called me.  I mean I can see him in my head….”

Andre: “Oh.  Yeah, I can see him, too. With that beard of his. His beard was always tight….”

Me: “Always. His younger brother’s beard was tight, too.”

Andre: “So was his mother’s!”

Me: [Laughter] “That’s cold. But she did have a bit of a mustache.”

Andre: “So did his sister.”

Me: “It was a hairy family….”

Andre: “Good people, though.”

Me: “Great people.  Andrea said he retired early, and they’ve been doing some traveling.”

Andre: “Good for them. He worked hard.”

Me: “What’s his name, though?”

Andre: “Arrgh…I almost had it!”

Me: “Leave it alone, man. You gon’ hurt yourself.”

During our chat we conjured everything but the man’s social security number and suit size, but his name? Not a chance. About five minutes later, in the middle of another subject, Andre yells out: “Timothy!”

Me: “Timothy Macintosh! Yep, that’s him.”

What happens next is what usually happens: For the rest of the conversation, one person quietly cheers that he is not losing his mind, while the other (in this case, me) ponders what is Lost In Space. Not the old TV show, but the bits of my vocabulary floating about the heavens.

Steven Ivory, veteran journalist, essayist, and author writes about popular culture for magazines, newspapers, radio, TV, and the Internet. Respond to him via [email protected]