September 05th, 2019

It takes so little to amuse me. Really.  I always heard the saying, "simple pleasures for simple minds" and I suppose I am a case in point.

Recently, even though it was a traditional work day, Tim was not working from home!  He was away for the day! Wow!  I'm not used to be home alone anymore.  I decided to use that day to my best advantage which means, at the very least, washing/polishing floors in general and cleaning Tim's office (without disturbing any of his myriad piles of stuff) in specific.  This includes cleaning his leather desk chair.  Leather furniture requires special care if it's going to last and since his fanny wasn't in his chair that day, it was the perfect day to do it.

Usually when Tim is home I try my best to be quiet.  Not tippytoe mousie quiet, but I try to be courteous.  If he is video conferencing it would not be cool to have me vacuuming behind his chair.  If he is trying to concentrate on a thorny problem,  it would not be helpful for me to have music blaring in the next room.  See?  Not anything crazy, just consideration on my part.   It's not a hardship on me. I have music "playing" in my head all of the time anyway so I am not without tunes and for the rest, it's just a matter of scheduling my own chores around what he is doing. Not a big deal.

Still, with Tim gone for the day, I had the entire work-a-day to do what I hoped to accomplish.  And sometimes what I wish to accomplish requires music. A lot of music.  Really LOUD music.  And singing along.  Singing along at great volume.  And dancing. Lots and lots of very very bad dancing.    It felt to me as if it would be those sorts of chores and therefore, that sort of day.

I selected my work-along music with great care.  It had to be the music A) I want to hear and B) high energy music suitable for high energy work.  So lively and loud were both required.  On these rare days. I use my computer to provide the noise.  It's centrally located so I can hear it from anywhere in the house and it has really good speakers that I, otherwise, rarely use. So there we go.  

Initially I wasn't certain whose music I wanted to hear. So I spent a little time piddling around first pulling up one musician then discarding it for another.  I don't know why the Beatles came to mind really but I'm so glad they did.  Once I got started on them, my chores, and therefore, my day, flew by.

I danced around the house as I swept and vacuumed and polished and cleaned and sang my heart out.  I sang until my voice gave out and then I sang some more in a raspy, hoarse growly voice that would have scared small children.  I'm sure I looked as if I were having some sort of strange attack while I was dancing (because I am not good at it and I know it) AND what's more, I didn't care one bit.  It was glorious.

And the thing that surprised me the most was that I remembered all of the words.  Every word to every song was spot on. That is kind of crazy.   How is it that we have had the same home number for more than 3 years now but I cannot for the life of me remember my home phone number, but I know every word to every Beatles song ever written.  And by the way, that is 213 songs written as "The Beatles".  This number doesn't take into account the other songs that they wrote and performed on their own after the big break up.  And yup, I know those songs too.

My best guess is, my demented brain has chosen to use selective memory.  For whatever reason, my brain discards any information that it seems useful and will instead hold on fiercely to anything non-essential.  

For instance, I learned, way back in the 6th grade, that the Amazon River was about 4,000 miles long. I have never forgotten it.  I also never needed to know it.  Never once has there been a circumstance where I was called upon to provide that information. 

I also know that a sneeze travels at about 100 MPH and that it is impossible to lick your own elbow and that there are 336 dimples on a regulation golfball.  Why do I know these things?  Because I do not need to know these things.   It 's just stuff that I read somewhere, once upon a time, and now that information is permanently stuck in my  head leaving no room for far more important things like, again, my home phone number and the year that Tim and I got married.  (I remember the date just fine  - Dec 18th - it's the year that trips me up)

I know that Antares (the star) is 60,000 times larger than our own sun and that Leonardo DaVinci invented Scissors.  I recall that polar bears are all left handed and a goldfish's memory is only 3 seconds long.  Abraham Lincoln had a dog named Fido and the longest word that can be typed using just one row of the keyboard is 'typewriter'.   

And yet, a few days ago I couldn't think of the word, toaster.

Sigh.

This getting older stuff is tricky.  Perhaps even made a bit harder because my brain has always worked a little differently than other people's. 

On the other hand, I take comfort in knowing that, apparently, until the day I die, I will still know all of the words to all of the Beatles songs.  I may not know who I am by  then,  but I will still know who the walrus was.