Do It Now!

by Jim Freund

February 2021

            ATTENTION, all seniors – especially you septuagenarians and octogenarians. Hark to my latest discovery, aimed at reducing much of the self-flagellation we’re prone to impose on ourselves.

             The inspiration came to me last week at home while getting ready to meet a friend for an hour of indoor tennis. I was in the process of scouring my teeth and gums with one of those electric brush/floss jetstream gadgets. All of a sudden, a timely brain notice fought its way in under the buzzsaw of the gadget: Hey, Jim, remember to take along a small towel for the tennis, on the off chance that you manage to work up a sweat.

             Now, my time-honored way of dealing with this sort of thing has been to place absolute trust in my short-term memory. No problem – I’ll clearly be able to retrieve the need for a towel fifteen minutes from now, as I go about mustering my racket and balls for the tennis trek. That’s when I’ll go fetch the towel and insert it into my tennis bag, well-poised to soak up any minor beads of perspiration that might later surface on my forehead.

             But on that particular day last week, the towel notice came coupled with an  instant awareness of the problem it raised. Like one of those cartoon light bulbs switching on to signify a moment of insight, I suddenly realized that in the 15 minutes between the towel notice and my heading out the door, a variety of other concerns would probably clamor for my attention: Do I have my wallet?. . . Remember to take a jug of cold water. . . . Where did I put the car keys? And replacing my prior “no problem” hubris was the sad truth of reality – that in this otherwise proud-to-have-made-it-this-far eighth decade of life, too often something like the prosaic towel reminder will fail to resurface before my departure. As a result, I’ll be forced between games to mop my perspiring brow with one of those little moistened squares of paper used to clean my glasses, which really doesn’t do the trick – and leads to the self-flagellation I mentioned earlier.

             Last week, however, my brain – ignoring the noisy commotion taking place inside my mouth – sprung into high gear with this responsive thought: Hey, dope, if you put off fetching the towel until later, you’ll forget to do it. And from this came the real flash of inspiration, derived from a mundane towel but extending far beyond it – the realization that no matter what is then occupying your time, such intervening calls to action must be serviced immediately! They cannot be left to the unpredictability of surviving all those other interloping ruminations that clog the brain before the action needs to be taken.

  And that’s just what I did last week. I placed the brush/floss gadget temporarily back in its holder – resisting the urge to apologize to it for our interrupted engagement – pulled a small towel out of the linen closet, slung it over my left shoulder, and engaged my right arm to manipulate the gadget to satisfactory completion of its cleansing task. In fact, I kept the towel perched there continuously – well, more or less continuously, since it did fall off to the hardwood several times – until I was safely out the door and on my way to the court.

             Since then, I’ve taken this lesson to heart, becoming a firm devotée of the do-it-now school. If my brain receives a notice to take some worthwhile action that’s extraneous to what I’m involved in but contains a time limit for accomplishment, I stop whatever I’m in the middle of and do that extraneous deed (or arrange for its timely recall in some fashion that doesn’t depend on trusting my memory).

             I will confess, though, that this isn’t invariably met with good grace around the household. A few nights ago, for instance, while in the middle of wolfing down a delicious dinner cooked by my wife, I excused myself, rose from the table, and went off to follow the extraneous notice – which was to go to the den and record a football game then in process that  I wanted to watch later in the evening. As is often the case, this was not a quick and easy task to accomplish, so by the time I returned to the table, my food had become a few degrees cooler.     It would be a gross understatement for me to say that my wife, who had labored tirelessly in the kitchen to prepare the tasty repast, doesn’t necessarily endorse my new technique . . . . Oh, well, I do realize there are a few sacrifices that sometimes have to be made – and I guess my marriage is one of them . . . .

             Of course, remembering to take something with you for an outside foray is only one aspect of the overall memory problem we seniors often share –  such as the need to hold something in mind for a long interval (like the name of your colleague’s wife whom you’ll be seated next to at the upcoming annual party), or not recalling the whereabouts of something important (such as your favorite harmonica). Let’s save all that stuff for another time – today it’s strictly the need to hold something in memory for a short interval during which other things are likely to intervene.

  In the classic situation of having to leave the house in fifteen minutes, the safest way to insure that the needed object won’t be forgotten is to move it to the threshold of the front door right now, before you finish whatever else it is you’re working on. The underlying theory here is that you’re unlikely to forget to take something that’s in plain sight at your time of departure. One possible exception, though, is if the object (such as a certain hat) is something that you regularly keep by the door. In that case, the hat may not shout out to you to take it along, especially when your mind is full of all that other stuff. The solution, however, is simple – just leave a note for yourself at the door to “take the hat.” Actually, handwritten reminder notes can well serve the cause even when not connected to a hat – and even if the need to compose and position them requires a pause in your brushing/flossing.

             I confess to owning a little gizmo that I carry in my pocket, which records whatever I need to get done. The problem here, though, is remembering to play back what I’ve recorded at the time I need the information. The bowels of my gizmo contain reminders of unaccomplished times-sensitive tasks dating back months . . . .

             Another method that might work is initiating some continuing activity that will serve to remind you of the necessary action in question. For instance, let’s say that what you want to remember is to take a thermos of cold water for the tennis game, but just now you don’t have time to find and fill the thermos. Well, how about removing a large ice cube from the freezer and clutching it between your lips until you do have a later opportunity to locate the thermos – obviously an exemplary reminder of its purpose. But just keep in mind that this has to occur pretty quickly, or else the extracted cube is likely to disintegrate; and the resulting rush of cold water down your throat – which could easily substitute for the cube in terms of recalling the need for a thermos – will itself be just a passing memory five minutes later.

             How about setting an alarm to ring on your cellphone or all-purpose watch before you leave? Pretty good idea, I’d say, provided that when it goes off, you can remember why you set  it . . . . What if the need is to make a certain phone call that you can’t do right now but have to place before leaving the house? Well, how about turning to the recipient’s page in your cellphone and have that appear on the screen the very next time you look at the phone. But will that happen in the next 15 minutes . . . ?

            I could explore this subject at length, but let me mercifully close with a little strategem I’ve been known to try, though with decidedly mixed results. During my entire adult life I’ve worn a ring on my right pinky. I have over a dozen such rings, which are removable, and I alternate them every month or so. (These are to be distinguished from the three-strand wedding ring I wear continuously on the fourth finger of my left hand – a wedding gift my wife had fabricated for me in a size too small in circumference to get over the knuckle and thus has never been removed.)

             In order to recall something I need to remember, I’ve tried switching the right pinky ring to my left pinky, where it feels entirely unnatural. There’s no ignoring the difference – I’m aware of it constantly – and so any message I want to convey to myself by this unnatural act is poised for successful transmission. But the difficulty here is to remember what message it was I wanted to send. And even if I can remember that the purpose was to remind me to make a certain phone call (as is likely to be the case), the question is, to whom?

            I had a good buddy some years back (now deceased) whose first name was Wright but who everyone called by his nickname, “Lefty”. He would have been a perfect candidate for this gambit – of course, switching the ring from right to left pinky could only mean I wanted to call my buddy Lefty. But sadly, Lefty is no longer reachable, and I don’t seem to know any other Lefty’s now....

  Well, the gambit can still be useful – it just takes a little more imagination. For instance, let’s say the friend I want to call is a gregarious fellow lovingly referred to by friends as “Chuckles.” This, of course, rhymes with “knuckles”, which is what the ring had to climb over twice to get to where it is now . . . . And, although the reference here is a little further removed from the vicinity of the pinky, how about my using it to remember the need to place a call to a particularly clumsy guy who is often accused of being “all thumbs”....

             I would enjoy hearing any advice you readers might have to cope with the sorts of situations I’ve been rambling on about. Meanwhile, though, I have just one question for any of you – what is this small towel doing perched on my left shoulder....?