My wife and I were sitting watching television one night when she looked up from her knitting and said, “I forgot to call my mom today. Remind me to call her tomorrow.”
I was half-listening in the way most husbands listen to their wives, and nodded. The show droned on, and at the next commercial she said, “Oh, and I forgot to write a check for Colleen’s Chinese class. Remind me to write one before we leave.”
I nodded again. I could remember two items. That wasn’t a problem. She went back to her knitting and I skimmed the pages of a thriller. The commercial ended. The show came back on.
A minute later, she looked up and said, “One more thing. Remind me to-“
“Wait a second.” I stopped her. This had gone far enough. What was going on here? “How did I get stuck being your personal task list? It’s not enough I have to deal with my own faulty memory? I can’t even remember where I put my car keys. Now I have to keep track of your reminders too?”
It was more than a few reminders. I understood what she was saying. It was just under the surface, the next layer of epithelium. What she really meant was that she didn’t have time to bother with those low-level tasks. She didn’t want to devote any of her precious mental energy to it. From now on, she was going to let me handle the lower brain functions. That would be my bailiwick. Meanwhile, she was going to handle the higher level thought processes, the important stuff. She had shows to watch, books to read, things to do, a host of other things she was going to work on. I was the guy who was stuck with the rudiments.
“Cute, dear,” she said, focused on the scene she was knitting. “Can you remind me or not? Yes or no?”
I thought about it for a moment. “Tell me again, what do you want me to remember?”
“I knew you weren’t listening,” she said.
Maybe she was right after all. Remind me to let her know. Anyone else working as someone’s human sticky pad?
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