Memory loss

Something that I truly struggle with is remembering information that I should know - whether it's people's faces, their names, stuff they tell me, etc. I forget my own stuff too, but it's something of a bigger deal when it involves other people. Today was a case in point.

One of my little luxuries in life is to get gas at a full service gas station. Today, I pull up, and the guy filling up the gas seems like a nice, friendly guy. After he rings through my Visa card, he comes back with the bill, and says, "I thought it was you, Esther!"

"Hi! Um, refresh my memory on your name...and where I know you from???"

So we figure that out - that's not so bad that I had forgotten that, because we had worked at a camp together 10 years ago, and memory loss is acceptable when it has to reach back into past decades. But then he says, "Yeah, we went for coffee a couple times, too!"

"We did???" I don't remember that in the slightest! Personally, I'm of the opinion that he must have gotten together with another redhead whose name was also Esther, because it really scares me if I forgot something like that.

Another recent memory loss event occurred a few months ago. My aunt publishes a magazine, and one of her publications focused on TCKs, Third Culture Kids. She had asked me to answer some questions for her from my own experiences as a TCK a few months prior, which I had done, albeit very briefly (I don't really feel like I'm a good TCK candidate). When she mailed out the publication, I browsed through it to see what she had used of my answers, and found an entire article written by me! I couldn't figure it out in the slightest - all I had done was send her a few short replies that weren't very relevant in the slightest! Where had this article come from??? And as I read through it, I could not quite imagine myself having written it! The writing style didn't seem to be mine, and I didn't think I would have expressed some of the concepts presented in the article. When I finally asked my aunt, she reminded me that a couple years ago, she had asked me to write an article for her on being a TCK. And yes, after that I did find it in my Sent folder - the very same article - written by Yours Truly. Can you say slightly embarrassing???