Memory - Good for the Old Stuff!

Ah, yes, 44042 – that’s the code to open the doors of our sedan we traded for our current SUV three years ago. 

Hummm, 619020 – that would be Mother’s Account Number at Simpson’s Department Store in Toronto. When I was a teen, I could get on the Toronto Subway (or TTC – Toronto Transit System) and head down to Queen Street. Just be reeling off that number, I could charge something to Mother’s account. 

Then there was 96682 – Mother’s T. Eaton Co. account number where I could also just say the number and merchandise would be mine. (What? Eaton’s went out of business, you say?) 

Then, there was Hubby’s payroll number at Exxon in Aruba: 78925.  Golly, the kids could charge whatever they needed to Dad’s paycheck! 

That’s a problem for us older folks. We can recall the simple five and six digit numbers from the 50s, probably because we only had two or three of them and we did not need to fumble through our wallets for a matching card. 

But, of course, we have “progressed”! We have bar codes so everything we purchase can just be scanned, often by a person talking to someone else, or even using a cell phone. We are at the mercy of the computerized scanner and even more so, the data entry person putting the correct price in the system. At the grocery and drug stores, those prices fluctuate and every week there are changes and specials. 

We are told not to write down the entry code for the vehicle, the PIN numbers for ATM cards, our passwords for websites on our computers, etc. 

Now you might think that just “old” people cannot remember all these numbers and special words. If you believe that, I must tell you about a couple of  “grand” people in their twenties who cannot access their e-mail accounts. 

Remembering all these codes, passwords and account numbers and names is to just fill my brain enough that I cannot recall the name of the person I just met. 

But I can remember Ted Gorski, the man who owned the McDonald’s franchise in Barrie in 1974. How, can I? Well, we were taking a Dale Carnegie Course and learning how to remember grocery lists by a stacking method and peoples’ names by association. 

Ted Gorski? Ah, well, that is like Polski Ogorski dill pickles? 

Uh, oh . . . 

If any of this rings a clear bell with you, perhaps you’d enjoy reading a column written by Don Campbell in yesterday’s USA Today about how much better today’s young people are NOT doing! It is called Plugging in, tuning out. Here is the link: 

http://blogs.usatoday.com/oped/2008/09/plugging-in-tun.html?loc=interstitialskip