Memories…Light the corners of my mind

What in God’s name did we ever do without search engines?

It feels like nearly every day, I scan my middle-aged brain for a random word or half-thought that doesn’t quickly rise to the surface. Although part of the normal aging process, it’s increasingly frustrating since I have always had a decent memory. In fact, I’ve never been a list-maker. I find that on those rare occasions when I do make a list, I end up leaving it at home (when I’m at the grocery) or at work on my desk (when I’m trying to pack for a vacation). So I find them to be fairly useless. (Hey, maybe I need a list to remind me where I left my list? This is a breakthrough!)

Nowadays, however, there is an alternative for our poor age-addled memories: the search engine. Yesterday, for example, I was commuting to work, blasting my satellite radio as is my typical start to every morning. (As many of you know, we’re addicted to XM Satellite radio and have receivers in both cars and the house – more on that in other posts). Since the Red Sox lost the evening before, I was avoiding sports, and decided instead to channel surf the radio’s 150+ stations to try something new. Ended up on “Beyond Jazz,” a progressive version of the station I usually listen to, “Real Jazz.” In these days of the “long tail” marketing solution, it won’t surprise you to learn there’s actually a difference between the two. “Real Jazz” is more traditional jazz, lots of Thelonius Monk, Miles Davis, Louis Armstrong, etc. Since I only recently began my jazz education, this is typically where I stop and learn.

Anyway…I moved to ”Beyond Jazz,” where they were playing a great song by someone or something called “Buckshot LeFonque” that I really loved. Instantly I made a mental note to remember the name so I could ask my musical guru (Bobbers) about it when I got home. This unique name had to be easy to remember, right? Well, the day wore on and by noontime, I could only remember half the name – and I wasn’t sure totally if I had it right. Certainly I couldn’t remember how to spell “LeFonque”. So, what did I do? Promptly launched Google and did a search and quickly found what I was looking for and sent an email to Bobbers to let him know I found some new music.

The point of this story? So long as we can recall the vague outlines of what we think about early in the day, we can Google it later for instant recall. For Baby Boomers and those young’uns behind us, this is a very good thing.