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Peter Rook: on selective memory syndrome
It is common for men of my not-so-tender age to have problems with short-term memory storage. I say storage, but the storage is not a problem, retrieving it is a problem.
It is common for men of my not-so-tender age to have problems with short-term memory storage. I say storage, but the storage is not a problem, retrieving it is a problem.It's no joke getting old and trying to remember stuff.
Last week, I wrote about how married men are prone to bouts of selective hearing when questions about changing the colour scheme in the bathroom arise or explaining the offside rule occur.
During my days of marriage, I was also accused, on numerous occasions, of selective memory syndrome.
It was never actually given a name – but I knew what she was implying when she said: "That's just typical of you. You only hear what you want to hear, and you only remember what you want."
Or, "Oh did we forget? Conveniently forget more like."
Selective memory syndrome can strike a married man without warning, and at the most inconvenient of moments.
It explains why a man might remember the line-up (including substitutes - used and un-used) from the 1980 West Ham FA Cup final, but he can forget any number of the following:
a) The date of the wedding anniversary
b) The date of the mother-in-law's birthday
c) The precise date and time of that ante-natal parenting class you were supposed to attend.
As you can see, dates are a particular headache for men, which explains why his partner/wife has to remember birthdays for both sides of the family.
Selective memory syndrome also strikes in the middle of domestic disputes.
This is where your partner, in order to get the upper hand in an argument, completely makes up something you've said.
I found that the only fail-safe way to deal with this situation was to deny I was there at all. If things got really bad, I simply said, "Sorry but I don't remember who you are."
My memory has not improved a great deal since my divorce. In fact, it would be fair to say that it has deteriorated rapidly with the onset of middle age.
A friend of mine who is also in his middle years said he likes to think of his brain as a bit like a computer with memory overload. It is so stuffed full of fascinating information that putting a new fact on the top simply means he loses the last fact he put in. The ones at the bottom of my brain stay exactly where they are.
In truth a better simile would be to say that the middle-aged man's brain is a bit like a jumble sale - there might be one or two choice items in there, but most of it is useless bric-a-brac that no-one wants.
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