Mental Inventory

Remember back when we were in middle school, before everyone had programmable phones and you had to remember phone numbers or write them down? I used to know about a dozen phone numbers by heart--home phone, naturally (in case of stranger danger), work phones for parents, friends, maybe the barn.

Today, I know about a half-dozen phone numbers. I know Dan's. I know how to call work. And I can call about four PR people for various hospitals. But that's it. I don't know my parents' numbers, even though their cell numbers have been the same for about eight years. I have no idea what my sister's number is. I couldn't call a single friend.

Tonight I went to this lecture at an engineering school, and it was one of the most tech-y tech lectures I've sat through in a long time. Usually I can muddle my way through, remembering vague bits of physics and math, recalling statistical things from some college biology research classes. I'm much better at the biological- or medicine-based lectures, but this one was supposed to be about the semiconductor revolution, 1947 to present day, so I thought I could handle it. Frankly, I'll be lucky to pull together a short story. It was all numbers and theories and abstract stuff.

As I think I've written about before, and as I'm sure some have heard me complain, I am amazed at the stuff I've learned and forgotten. I used to know calculus. In fact, I was a year ahead all through high school when it came to advanced math. I didn't even have to take math my senior year because I'd already taken calculus. (Keep in mind I went to dinky high schools where only like 20 students took calculus every year and Cal II would never be offered.) But today? I've forgotten all of it. I've forgotten all the algebra II I took my freshman year, too, and pretty much everything about every chemistry class I ever took.

I'm better with the big-concept stuff, like history or literature. There's more room for bullshit there, and you can talk about theories and consequences without getting bogged down in details like dates or which king was actually leading England at that time, if you throw in enough superfluous information.

So tonight I was driving home, again baffled at things I've forgotten, when I decided to try to think of everything that is taking up the room in my brain where calculus and chemistry and physics and whatnot used to be.

--I know a lot more song lyrics than I used to, and I still remember the lyrics to all those soft-rock songs and musical numbers that my mom listened to when I was a kid. So I figure that's a good portion, right there, because there's a lot of songs out there and I love singing along to them, preferably loudly and slightly off-key. Fist pumping is optional.

--Books. I'm more well-read than I was in high school and even in college, when the reading was required. I told one of my grad school professors that I spent more time reading narrative nonfiction books than doing work for her narrative nonfiction class, and looking back, it wasn't a mistake to do all the reading but it was a mistake to tell her that.

--Sports stuff. I didn't have to remember Jacoby Ellsbury's birthday before he joined the Red Sox and became unbearably awesome. I also didn't have to know anything about cyclists, bicycle engineering and mechanics or European races prior to meeting Dan.

--Dan's family history. There's four kids, and he's the youngest, and he's got a sister-in-law and two nieces and there are tons of aunts and uncles and it's an ongoing headache.

--Celebrity gossip. One of the blogs I follow distills everything into a handy twice-a-day bullet-pointed listing, which I read when I'm waiting on my e-mail at work to load.

--Health care. When I was in high school, I had this little pocket-sized notebook I'd fill with descriptions of bizarre diseases (like Prader-Willi syndrome) and concepts (a fetus is a lot like a tumor) because I was a weird kid and kinda pretentious. I never shared or showed this notebook to anyone, but I liked thinking I could diagnose someone's problem and save them the trip to the ER or something, probably. Today, I know about even more useless stuff (the hemicorporectomy) and also a lot of useful things, like health disparities and preventive medicine and the names of PR people and their phone numbers at their office, since I don't know how to program their numbers into my work phone.

--Beer. I still know jack shit about liquor and wine, but I'm slowly learning more about beer. And granted, I don't know a lot, but it's more than I used to and I know what I like and that's the most important thing, right?

--How many miles past an oil change I can go in my car. Because my old car would spontaneously die even if I'd just gotten an oil change.

(And in case you were wondering, I know I can get at least 5,000 past the recommended mileage.)