Memory

Posted by Terry McNichols

I was not happy the other day when I participated in a memory test on Oprah by Dr. Oz (that can't be his real name....must want us to think of wizards when we hear it!) Dr. Oz gave out a phone number and asked everyone to remember it, then they cut to commercial. I repeated it over and over for about 30 seconds, then "Oh, there's an email," and "Hmmm, I wonder what I'll fix for dinner tonight." Remember my post about mouse holes? After the commercial, the audience was asked to repeat the number. I could get 3 or 4 of the numbers, but couldn't possibly remember the whole thing. Am I headed for Alzheimer's? Dr. Oz then stated that it's not so important if you remember the exact number but whether or not you can recognize it in a list of several numbers. Since the number had already been given, I wasn't able to test myself on that part. And I don't think I want to try that test on myself at this point. Too scary!

With the advent of the cell phone, I don't think any of us are very good at remembering phone numbers. I can barely recall my own number, let alone all the number of my kids and friends. Or is the problem that we all have too many numbers? Everyone has their own cell now so it's a home number and a couple of cell numbers for every family. OVERLOAD!

Oprah's response made me a little less worried. She said it's not whether you can remember the name of something right away (example: pen) but that you can remember what it is used for.
(Photo by Antoon's Foobar, shared via Flickr)