Forget Me Not

I once read an article on Alzheimer’s Disease that one of the diagnostic tests was remembering what you had for breakfast, lunch and dinner yesterday. Which, as you can imagine, sparked all kinds of panic in the little flat I share with Saffy and Amanda.

            “O. M. G!” said Saffy with her usual restraint. “I can’t remember anything past my economy bee-hoon for breakfast! But then I always have that, so it’s not as if that’s too difficult, but lunch and dinner…” She wrinkled her brow and stared hard at the ceiling. “Nope. Not a thing! I’ve lost my mind!”

            Meanwhile, Amanda had cocked her head and frowned into the distance. Finally, she too gave up. “I know we had that steak last night…”

            “Oh, the steak!” Saffy moaned. “That’s it!”

            “But I can’t remember what I had for breakfast and lunch!”

            The other test, I said, was to count backwards from a hundred, but in sevens.

            Silence descended on the room as three very expensively educated brains thought hard.

            “A hundred…” Saffy began. “Umm….minus seven…minus five…so that’s ninety-five…minus two…” Her fingers worked. “Minus two…ninety-five, ninety-four, ninety-three! Ok. A hundred, ninety-three…Minus seven…So that’s ninety…uhmm….”

            “These are the stupidest tests ever! Who can count backwards from a hundred in sevens?” Amanda said, tossing her luxuriant hair.

            Turns out, Sharyn can. She rattled off the numbers, all while texting her son to remind him he had Chinese tuition at four that afternoon.

            “Aiyoh, liddat oh-so cannot, ah?” she said when she got to two, and asked if negative numbers were allowed in this test.

            “You’re a freak,” Saffy told her.

            “Ay, I accountant, OK? If cannot minus in my head, then how?”

            A few days later, we tried the test with our friend Christina. She rolled her eyes. “In what universe would anyone ever ask someone to count backwards in sevens? And why sevens? Why not threes?”

            “Well, I guess fives are too easy,” Amanda began.

            “I’m the last one you should be asking. I’m convinced I already have Alzheimers. So, I’ve been reading this book about how to overcome my shyness in public? So, the other day at a party, I walked up to a complete stranger, stuck my hand out and said, ‘Hi, it’s very nice to meet you! I’m Chris!’ And you know what she said? She said, ‘Chris, don’t be stupid, I’m your cousin!’”

            Saffy sucked in her breath. “And you didn’t recognize her?”
            Christina shrugged. “Alzheimers. Confirmed.”

            Then there was the time we all went to the wedding of our friend May. It was one of those fancy society weddings where you had several parties over a couple of days. At the rehearsal dinner, I sat next to this lovely girl, whose name I have, of course, completely forgotten, so let’s call her Jane. Jane and I chatted the whole evening, bonding, especially, over Star Wars. It was one of those casual encounters that leaves a warm fuzzy feeling inside you and makes you think that you might just have met someone special and wonderful.

            So, the next day, at the wedding ceremony, we were all dressed up in our best suits and frocks, and the guests were mingling in the garden admiring the flower petals strewn all over the grass.

            Still glowing from the lovely evening I had, I smiled at the girl next to me and said, “Hi, I’m Jason. Are you friends with the bride or groom?”

            She stared at me. “Yes, I know. I’m Jane. We sat next to each other at dinner last night!”

            I blinked and stared. My mind raced. “Oh, yes!” I laughed in what I hoped was a casual manner. “Of course. I didn’t recognize you in the daylight!”

            “Oh. My. God!” Saffy said, coming up next to me as we both watched Jane’s back disappearing into the crowd. “Did you seriously just say that? ‘I didn’t recognize you in the daylight’? Really? You made her sound like she was a hooker!”

            “I panicked!” I moaned. “I really didn’t recognize her!”

            “How could you not? You spent the whole evening with her!”
            Of course, that was all we could talk about for days. Then, my doctor friend Ben said I probably had prosopagnosia. “It’s when your brain misfires and you can’t recognize people that you should know. Like your own mother. There are tests.”

            “I wish I didn’t recognize my own mother,” my sister said when I told her. “But really, there’s such a thing?”

            “Apparently, there’s a test!”

            “You all very free, hor?” Sharyn told me.