I don’t know if I have ‘selective’ amnesia, I rarely get this doubt …except may be at the time when I forgot that my 7 year old cousin was sitting behind me in my bicycle and I realized a tad bit too late that the cycle was a little bit lighter than it was when I started from home. Too bad coz when I looked back I saw a poofy, furious 7 year old get up from the muddy street and run towards my house screaming on top of her voice how I had tried to run her over…yikes! And may be at the time I completely forgot my brother’s German Shepherd following me around the house and ended up locking him in the garage for a whole night. I bet I thought I was going to die when I opened the door the next morning and saw him staring back at me! Or may be when I forgot the name of a friend whom I met in my office after a long time and an overturned id card not helping me much; and my face being as confused as Mr Bean, the lady took all but a second that as usual I had forgotten her name.
But apart from that and those frequent occasions when I turn the entire room upside down searching for my glasses which were right there on my head, I never really had much trouble remembering most things in life….except numbers!
Aaargghhh, don’t get me started on them coz I might never stop. I have a major problem with numbers. I can’t remember them to save my life! Phone numbers, account numbers, card numbers, birthdays, anniversaries, bus route numbers, door numbers, pin codes, my vehicle’s number and those god awful security numbers …who the hell came up with that idea of having numerical security pass codes?!
I am one of those rare species who wanted to call home and ended up reaching a wrong number. I store my own phone number in my phone, I end up changing my mobile number once in every 2 months and I can’t remember a number after I have been through the pain of memorizing the next. I can’t remember, to be frank, what my Bangalore phone number is!
I have friends who call me on their birthdays to remind me to wish them. Else they would have to go through the terribly embarrassing ordeal a close friend and an ally had to go through; I called her on her birthday; chatted for hours and ended up hanging up without a proper reply for her repeated ‘are you sure the purpose of your call is done?’ Apparently her brother was in splits after that conversation. So my friends usually call me up with a ‘wish me before it’s too late or you’ll come back tomorrow with a bucket full of Sorries’. Well it’s a different story that I got an account of mine locked by keying in my own birth date wrong.
At times, my brain is useful enough to remember all the numbers, only it doesn’t bother about the order of their occurrence. So when I was stuck in MG road without my mobile, I had to try 5 numbers on a Re 1 phone before I could finally reach my brother in law with the last 1 rupee coin I had.
And ATM pins! How can the most important thing in your life be a 4 digit number? Hey what about people like me huh? I never really try in vain to memorize that number. I just go to the ATM and key it from practice. The most important thing here being, I should never be conscious of my action, as in duping my brain to believe that it doesn’t have to hold this number, it’s there in some other secondary storage and so it won’t be burdened. But this one day I made this horrible mistake of pausing and thinking before keying in my pin and lo…my stupid brain throws out the most precious 4 digits. All that happening a day before I had to catch a flight to London and a second before I could withdraw the rent I had to pay my land lord. I stopped short of screaming in the ATM. I rushed back to my cubicle and sat there doing things to make my brain look away from the issue on hand, just like a mother trying to cajole her kid staring at that pointy tip of an injection needle. After 4 hours and 3 visits to the ATM and a call to icici to unlock my account, I had to go out of my way to make my visit to the ATM seem routine and I managed to enter the key right. Phew!

That’s my pathos! Though I am thankful for the few thoughtful souls, like this friend of mine whose phone number’s last 5 digits is his name typed on the mobile’s keypad. Better but not good enough, as I still cant remember the first 5 digits…uh-oh!

Song on: You know my name
Mood: Sleepy

Labels: General, Moi

Posted by Sat at 10:28 AM
19 comments

19 Comments:

do one thing gimme ur pin numbers to me, i'll tell u wenever u want, ;D

By  brute, at 11:45 AM, April 02, 2007  

brootey...u over took me with the same comments i was abt to make :D :D pin number matter is quite common i guess..incldng me many of mates do the same thing..ketta solla theriyathu..but they can key in the moment they are near the machine...unga memory pathi i knew it bit well...corrs corrs corrs corrs...reminds u of anything...grrrrrr.....

By  gils, at 11:55 AM, April 02, 2007  

Brute;
420 kahi ka....keep dreaming :P

Gils;
hehe...corrs, yeah i do remember, i do remember....patience is a virtue gils :)

By  Sat, at 12:04 PM, April 02, 2007  

attendence pleej :)

By  KK, at 9:11 PM, April 02, 2007  

bestu :-)

By  Arunkumar, at 9:22 PM, April 02, 2007  

Hehehe... Sat dont you worry... I have even worse things from my side...
Once when I was studying Physics (Exam time athan :D), my mom told me to keep something in the fridge. I went and kept the physics book inside fridge and then talked to my mom for some time and when I went back to my room to study, I didnt remember where I kept my book. I searched all around the house and after some time , my sis opened opened the fridge to take something and she found my book :)
I have taken a toothbrush from hostel to college thinking I took my pen...
Once I was stopped by cops at 1AM and they asked me for my bike number to verify if it was my bike or a stolen bike. I have tried many times to remember the number but could never remember more than KA-01 (Which you get to see in most vehicles) remaining 4 digits I could not remember, chumma whatever come in my mouth I told that number. He was like is this your bike or you took it from somewhere?? I could convince him that I dont remember my number. Finally showed my office id card and he let me go :) If not for the id card annaiki kambi yenna vendiyathu than :)

By  KK, at 4:54 AM, April 03, 2007  

whatever came in my mouth*

By  KK, at 4:55 AM, April 03, 2007  

could'nt convince*

By  KK, at 4:56 AM, April 03, 2007  

:D :D KK phsics book chancela :D :D kalkirukeenga :D :d reminds of joey in friends...

By  gils, at 3:54 PM, April 03, 2007  

saw ur comment on my blog. Thanks for coming. I like ur concept on the song and mood for every article u write...i guess i haven't seen that anywhere before...novel

By  Wyvern, at 7:03 PM, April 04, 2007  

Here is a suggestion. Try remembering the important numbers in binary format. Rende number than 0&1. Eppadi idea? :)

By  Anonymous, at 10:51 AM, April 05, 2007  

soo..u hav selective amnesia......and have problem with numbers.....then u must have been great in maths...and ur teachers wud have had fun in correcting ur papers....u wudve forgotten wat u rote the minute u rite another page in ur math paper....lolzz....nyway u only have amnesia....i have much bigger difficulties and i am going on to bcom a cost accountant!!
u know i will rite -1+4= -3!!....i used to rite 7+4=10.....3+3=9!!..and lots more!!

By  Vidya Natarajan, at 11:40 PM, April 05, 2007  

hey by the way drop in to my blog!!

By  Vidya Natarajan, at 11:41 PM, April 05, 2007  

You crack me up !! The only number that I muck up is my social security number. Everytime I am asked to verify that I end up repeating that number to myself and then tell the customer service person the last 4 digits ! One time I made a mistake with single digit of the SSN and the "helpful" customer servie guy encouraged me to try a couple of times, as I was "off by only one digit". On the flip side, it made me wonder about the security ! Hmm....

By  Vidya, at 7:35 AM, April 06, 2007  

:P

By  Heidi Kris, at 10:07 PM, April 06, 2007  

kk;
Physics book was awesome :D
nice place to chill out huh? :P

AK;
short and sweet-a? :)

Wyvern;
hehe...thanks, but it's not so original you see, picked up that habit from my office blog

By  Sat, at 9:42 AM, April 09, 2007  

Karthik;
naa nalla irukuradhu ungaluku pidikaliya?...where were you, hibernating huh...not updating ur blog as well :-/

Zanychild;
hey...ur problem is kinda fun isnt it..like i always get confused as in which coems first, the 'i' or 'e' in 'recieved', 'believe', even 'their'!...hope i got'em right this time.
BTW, i was surprisingly good at maths, a mystery to this day!...may be my brain took Shelock's advice and figured out that it shouldnt be crowing up that small place with a lot of unnecassary info and tossed somethings out, retaining hte important ones. only it's not intelligent enough to know which is more important...yikes!

By  Sat, at 9:45 AM, April 09, 2007  

Vidya;
LOL! sure a helpful customer service guy there :D
may be you should ask him to write ti down and not ask you to repeat ti everytime :))

HK;
:P
;)

By  Sat, at 9:48 AM, April 09, 2007  

hey same pinch..i can solve all tuf sums in math...it is only the silly ones i make a mistake....and due to which i always get in 95-99 in math....i think god has made it this way.....chinna chinna thappu pannalum.....periya thappu panna vidamataru ;)

By  Vidya Natarajan, at 12:58 PM, April 09, 2007  

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