July 14, 2007

Windmills of Your Mind

A new survey claims that if you store any information in your cell phone, you will forget it!

This whole cell phone boom is ensuring that an entire generation of people become bad at memorizing things. Putting details on your cell phone means that you will forget phone numbers and struggle to recall birthdays. I agree that people just don't remember anything anymore but is it that bad? The fact that everyone has a phone these days, all the numbers are on the other side of ten digits and almost everyone I know has two phone, then landlines will surely make it a little difficult to remember details.

How many phone numbers do I remember? OK, let's see ...five...six...ten...hmm not bad.....sixteen...oh hold that's eighteen...yes...of course she has three phone so that makes it twenty one...well I can safely say that I can recall thirty phone numbers off the cuff.

Is that really bad?

I'm of the opinion that bad memory ensures a good life but that can be taken out of context here. I think it's the other details that we are not good at memorizing. Mostly I come across people who need to be reminded about trivial things as landing up for appointments at the scheduled time which as a matter of fact was decided three days ago; I, at times, have to remind people to send some mail or stuff that they have been threatening to do but never get around; some times they do things at the exact time we need them to do but only that they are late by weeks or months. More often than not I remind people to pay up!

I had no clue that I was a victim of this not being able to memorize numbers thingy. A few days ago someone from my bank came to get a couple of forms filled and asked for my land line number. I had no clue what he was asking about.

What did I do?

Scanned my cell phone's contact list. If that wasn't enough, the other day I met an old friend; we go back a long way...almost 24 years. Our fathers were officers in the same regiment. She told me that her father, who had lost touch with mine, wanted my father's cell phone number. She was more than a little surprised when I had to refer to my lifesaving phone book on the cell to fish out my father's phone number.

The funny thing about memory is that the stupid games it plays with you...nothing fixes a thing so intensely in the memory as the wish to forget it.

Like a clock whose hands are sweeping
Past the minutes on it's face
And the world is like an apple
Whirling silently in space
Like the circles that you find
In the windmills of your mind
-Windmills of Your Mind

(Alan, Marilyn Bergman and Michel Legrand)

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