River City Journal

I'll tell you as soon as I remember

Some of you may have heard me say my memory is like a rolling pin: OK on each end but a middle that can either make a flaky pie crust or a glob of paste.

I can remember things from when I was 3 or 4 years old. But if I just met you 10 minutes ago, I might not remember your name.

Speaking of remembering, who knows what a rolling pin is? Some of you with hair the color of mine know all about rolling pins. Some of you with dark hair that didn't come out of a bottle might not be so sure.

We have a rolling pin at our house. It occasionally comes out of the basement cupboard where we store cooking utensils and gadgets that either are too big for our kitchen shelves or are so rarely used we don't want them in the way.

The cupboard also is the home of a nifty Tupperware plastic sheet that is supposed to be used as the surface for rolling out dough. But it has been rolled so tightly and for so long around our rolling pin that it is almost impossible to use, because it won't stay flat.

Who knew Tupperware has a memory too? We also have an ancient and well-worn rolling pin hanging on our kitchen wall. It was signed by everyone at our wedding nearly 40 years ago. One of my wife's aunts said it was an old tradition, and she even shellacked the rolling pin to preserve the ballpoint-pen signatures. We consider it a family heirloom.

But back to my on-again-off-again memory.

(See? I'll bet some of you thought I forgot what I was doing.) I have never been a great rememberer of names. I meet lots and lots of people. Many of them, I know, I am likely never to encounter again. My brain is already overloaded with stuff, some useful and some not, and I never try to remember anything I know I can look up.

This has left me in some pretty embarrassing situations over the years when I've had to carry on an extended conversation with someone I know without ever mentioning his or her name.

I'm the same way about movie actors. I'll start to tell someone about a particularly good performance that I've admired. I can remember the actor but not the name. By the way, I also usually forget the name of the movie and much of the plot.

I can't tell you how often I've watched the same episode of "Law and Order" and enjoyed it as much as if I'd never seen it before. My wife, whose memory is still intact, says something like: "Didn't we just watch this one?" When? "Monday," she says. Oh.

If I see people for the first time in a long time, I'm not always able to recognize them. Faces change. So do body shapes. One thing I do remember, though, is voices.

On Wednesday, I got a call from the front desk here at the newspaper telling me there was someone who wanted to see me from the Nevada Daily Mail, a newspaper on the western edge of Missouri where I was the editor 30 years ago, a newspaper now owned by Rust Communications. Why would anyone drive seven hours to see me without calling ahead? When I went to the front lobby, there was a woman who looked familiar. She spoke first, asking if I remembered her. As soon as she spoke, I knew it was Debbie, who became a reporter and photographer for the newspaper right after she graduated from Central Missouri State University. Turns out she's been married and living in Sikeston the past 17 years. "How long have you been here?" she asked. Ten years, I said.

At least I remembered that.

R. Joe Sullivan is the editor of the Southeast Missourian.