MEMORIES OF FORGETTING

The first time I forgot something was a long time ago. When I was five years old, to be specific. When I was sitting in a classroom, writing a Mathematics class test, to be even more specific. Mathematics, in those uncomplicated childish times, meant a simple progression from number 1 to number 100. No arduous additions, stupefying subtractions, maddening multiplications, devious divisions or other complicated calculations that continue to haunt us in later life.

But even then, as now, I was numerically challenged. The very shapes of the numbers challenged me, especially that of number 3. I was confused: were the pointy bits on the left and the rounded bits on the right, or vice versa? Frowning and chewing my pencil (most of my pencils looked like they had been attacked by woodpeckers), I tried to visualize the shape of 3. But like a missing piece of a jigsaw puzzle, the shape of the mystic number eluded me.

Not willing to give up without a fight (Maths was, and continues to be, Academic Enemy No. 1), I came up with a solution. I had to write from 1 to 50, so I had to write the number 3 a total of 15 times ( I just checked it out twice, counting on my fingers). Each time, I meticulously alternated the sides of the pointy and the rounded parts, so that 33 ended up looking like an 8 broken down the middle.

Needless to say, my score in the test was unmemorable, and I have duly forgotten it.

Though I remember my first instance of forgetting in photographic detail, the subsequent instances and too many and too frequent to remember.

DO YOU REMEMBER WHEN YOU FIRST FORGOT SOMETHING?