Stories from the Aisle of (wo)man

Posted by Terry McNichols

Today I had a funny encounter with another women in the aisles of Fred Meyer.  We were both in the produce aisle when I heard her say, "Oh, dear, I can't find my shopping cart."  The cart was actually very nearby, but the comment brought us together over a couple of funny stories.  I'm wondering if anyone else has had these experiences or whether my senility stands out above yours!

A couple of weeks ago I was shopping and had almost filled my cart.  It was very crowded at my grocery store so I was leaving my cart at the end of the aisle and making a dash for an item and returning to my cart.  This is always a dangerous habit for me, as I have often forgotten completely where I left the cart.  But this time, I hurried back to my cart and then remembered something I had missed that was about 4 aisles away and near the front of the store.  I raced my cart through the crowded aisles, found the missing item, and turned around to put it into the now almost-empty cart that I was steering.  Alas, this was not my cart at all.  I hurried back to the spot where I thought I might have left my cart, only to find a very bewildered older gentleman, looking quite confused and forlorn, hands full of items.  I apologized profusely and we exchanged carts.  He was very happy to learn that it wasn't HE who was losing his marbles!

My fellow shopper and I further bonded over several similar stories of lost carts.  I usually don't walk away from my cart these days, as I have had some very lengthy searches in the past.  But one particularly annoying time stands out.  I had left my cart for just a moment to retrieve an item from another aisle and came back to find it gone.  I  frantically searched the store, sure that I was indeed losing my mind, until I came upon a store clerk, restocking the last two items from my originally-full cart.  Apparently this store had experienced many problems with homeless people (or maybe people with memory problems like me) filling grocery carts and then leaving the store.  So they were quick to restock the items from abandoned shopping carts.  The clerk was very chagrined and I spent another lost hour retracing my grocery list to remember what I had put in the original cart. 

Don't even get me started about cars in parking lots.  I make it a habit to park in almost the same spot at my usual stores.  And I have the magic panic button on my key fob that allows me to set off the alarm if I happen to be in the general vicinity.  Hmm.  I wonder if they make those for shopping carts? 


(Photo by Earl-What I Saw 2.0, shared via Flickr)

Rerun Tuesdays - on mouse holes

Posted by Terry McNichols

I suffer from the usual aging annoyance of marching into a room with great certainty and forgetting completely why I am there. I retrace my steps, hoping that something along the way will jog my memory and get me back on track. Or I hurry to my computer, sit down, and can’t remember what was so pressing that needed my immediate attention and 3 or 4 emails later, get up and remember that I was in the middle of a recipe. I go to the grocery store, leaving my list on the counter at home.

I am at a total loss to remember to bring my eco-friendly grocery bags into the store. We here in Washington are being hounded to bring our own grocery bags and I am dedicated to the idea. But the few times I have finally remembered and gone back to the car to pick up the bags, they were at home by the front door. I have requested a huge sign outside the grocery store saying: “Don’t forget your bags.” There is one store here that has done just that. Now I forget to read the sign.

If my husband takes a day off that isn’t his usual day off, I am out of sync all week. Two times last Saturday I tried to remind my husband to turn on the radio and listen to the sermon since we had to miss our usual Sunday service. The second time he reminded me it was only Saturday, he had a strange, knowing look on his face. I wonder if he thinks I’m losing it. I wonder at times if I am.

But this is even worse. I do this every day. Yesterday I went up to our loft to get a box. While there I noticed the guest bed and decided to change the sheets. The phone rang. I hurried down and answered it. Someone wanted a name and address. I sat at my computer to find the name, then read some email, followed a link somewhere. Before long I remembered the project for which I needed a box, and went up to the loft. And there I finished making the bed. I begin the day with a list of goals that really must be accomplished, if not by the end of the day, then soon. I am like this hound:

The fable is told about a bloodhound who started a hunt chasing a stag. A fox crossed the path, so the hound chased the fox. After a while a rabbit crossed the path, so the hound went after the rabbit. Later, a mouse crossed the path and the hound ended up chasing the mouse into a hole. The hound began his hunt on the trail of a magnificent stag and ended up watching a mouse hole!

Being computer addicted certainly does contribute to watching a lot of mouse holes. Some are fun and worthwhile, while others are deep holes down which one can fall and not surface for hours at a time. So please, don’t ask me what I do all day. I probably won’t remember.

(Mouse hole Photo by Hot Grill, shared via Flickr)

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)