The thing about short-term memory loss is, how would you remember if you have it?  Many of us rely on our family and friends to fill in the blanks when that significant date, or detail of an event, or our mother’s maiden name, (you’d think that would be a reliable challenge question), simply won’t form in that befogged memory bubble you depend on for basic communication.  Personally, I have always, (well, at least since I began ‘experimenting’ in the 60’s), had the worst version of this socially interactive affliction, wherein, if I use the phrase, “One of my best friends”, or “My brother is an expert in that field”, the name of that friend or my brother is simultaneously erased from my accessible cerebral recall.  Frustrating…at least embarrassing, right?

Usually, the manifestation of forgetfulness is relatively benign.  There’s no dire consequence, (for most of us), to misremembering that it was actually 1963, not ’64, when the Dodgers swept the Yankees in the World Series or that mozzarella, not parmesan, is the yummy, melty pizza cheese, but, more and more, the losing or misfiling of empirical data and basic common sense appears to be a mechanism for dealing, or not dealing with uncomfortable circumstances.  I could make a list, (a very long list), to illustrate this premise, but one poster-child-like example should suffice…Ferguson, (not for nuthin’, the word actually means, “I Forget”).  It’s hard to imagine what the assemblage of boobs in charge of the investigation into the Michael Brown shooting could have been experimenting with in the 60’s.  Certainly, nothing I took could have spawned the multitude of missteps, all of which were unwise, (pronounced, bonehead), reenactments of our besmirched history of such incidents.  And now, as these protests slowly dwindle from firebombing and looting to jaywalking, (Michael’s deadly offense, by the way), and bird-giving, the half-life of this outrage will once again be relegated to that fuzzy memory place.  And, like the myriad of bygone police brutalities, school shootings, mental case and gang-related horrors, Michael Brown’s ‘legacy’, (let’s be real…he seems to have been kind of a cigar-stealing punk who tragically encountered a poorly trained cop), except in the hearts and minds of his grieving family, will be as an occasional footnote to future inappropriate miscarriages of justice…at least, to the best of my recollection.

Oh…it’s Gary…my brother’s name.