Memories, Overflow the Corners of My Mind

My brain functions in the strangest way. If I'm trying to remember to email someone three pieces of information, without fail, I will type two of them, hit send and cross it off my To Do List. Hours later, I'll remember there was a third item. When I find I need a file from the other room to finish what I'm working on, I walk into that room and I'm blank. More often than not, I have to go back to my desk to see what I was doing and then I'll remember. Usually. On the other hand, bits of trivia pour forth with the slightest of promptings. My husband came home one day and said, "The trivia questions on the radio are getting pretty obscure. "I said, "What was the question?" He said, "Who's due at Idlewild?" Without missing a beat, I said, "Khrushchev." He said, "Yes, but why do you know that?" I started to sing: "There's a holdup in the Bronx, Brooklyn's broken out in fights. There's a traffic jam in Harlem that's backed up to Jackson Heights. There's a scout troop short a child. Khrushchev's due at Idlewild. Car 54 Where Are You?" "Car 54, Where Are You?" was a sitcom in the early 1960s. The theme song isn't repeated frequently like the one from "Gilligan's Island." I don't think I'd given it a thought in decades, and yet there it was, the entire song, right on the tip of my tongue. Another time, we were watching a Mary Tyler Moore retrospective. In one episode, Mary's friend Phyllis, who has always thought she was perfect, her marriage perfect, her husband and child perfect, has just found out that her husband has run away with another woman. She comes to Mary's apartment to tell her about the book she's reading about bees. "It seems that after the male bee, umm, 'services' the female, she eats him." She pauses dramatically. I say, "All in all, not a bad system." Phyllis says, "All in all, not a bad system." My husband says, "Why do you remember that?" sounding just a bit worried that this line has stuck in my mind. I don't know. I really don't know. It's strange.