Mnemonic Mneeded

I’ve always been good with numbers. We did mental arithmetic at Prince Rock Junior School, and I always scored near the top. Totting up columns of four-and-tuppences and such like was never much of a challenge when I had to collect on my paper round of a Friday night, and my GCE ‘O’ Level mark in mathematics (‘hard sums’, as a friend used to call it) was among my highest. So it strikes me as passing strange that even though I can still add up my expenses without benefit of a calculator, I can’t remember my own phone number without some sort of memory aid. I can remember our church’s telephone number, 222-9110 (a stammered emergency call, with a surprised ‘Oh’ at the end, perhaps as the caller is discovered by her sadistic kidnapper), but none of my family’s numbers has anything so dramatic to bring it to mind.

Today I forgot my postal code. I could remember the CBC’s M5W IE6 (Make Five Wieners I’ll Eat Six), but I draw a blank with my own. As for the house number and street in my address… well, we live in a street that is numbered (like in New York, or Owen Sound) and our house has a number, too. And, yes, you’re right: I mix them up from time to time.

My wife reassuringly tells me not to worry about it. She swears she is just as forgetful, but, of course, she’s lying. It’s true that I have never been good at remembering some things — the names of acquaintances, for example — but I wonder if this is how senile dementia slyly introduces itself, “not with a bang but a whimper”.

I can hear myself saying, “Goodness! Now what is my telephone number? How silly of me not to remember it, but I suppose it’s excusable as I never phone myself.” Or, “What’s my address, you ask? Well, let me think… I could take you right there, but, for the life of me I can’t remember the postal code.” If you ever hear me saying anything like the above, please don’t laugh. You’ll be there soon enough.

And, like me, you won’t remember where there is.