What you forget

[resonant]

A co-worker of mine recently, for no reason anyone has been able to identify, lost four hours of his life with a brief bout of what they call Transient Global Amnesia.

He can't tell me anything about what it was like, because he says it was like a bubble: while he was inside it, he apparently couldn't remember anything outside it; once he was out of it, he couldn't remember any of it happening at all.

His wife tells him he was very sweet and loving while it was happening, and in a very docile way cooperated with everything she asked him to do and believed everything she told him -- with one exception: he refused to believe her when she told him how old he was. He wasn't sure how old he actually was, but, damn it, he was quite sure he wasn't 68!

Comments

[pun]

This makes perfect sense to me. I knew I was getting old when I started uttering the phrase, "But I don't feel any different!" Which is what my mother used to say to me when I told her she was old.

A much younger co-worker said to me that she basically still thinks it's 2005, and I said I basically still think it's 1998. I realized that we both basically think it's the year we were 19-20.

[resonant]

I was 20 in 1984. Do I still think it's 1984? I'll have to give that some thought. I for damn sure do not feel as old as I am, though.

It made me wonder -- if I woke up tomorrow morning and had lost all my memories of my adult life, which parts of my current life would surprise me? Just how disappointed would I be in myself for not being a full-time author who lives all alone at the beach?