Ham It Up

So what was I talking about? Oh, yeah, forgetting stuff.

I know your memory is supposed to get fuzzier as you get older, but I experienced a few brain blips during the last week that are making me a little nervous.

The first and worst of these was the ham sandwich affair. I bring my lunches to work to save some money and one night last week I got all set to make myself a ham sandwich from the leftovers I had in the refrigerator.

I know I should avoid salted meats, but I like to treat myself every now and then.

The only problem was I couldn’t find the ham. I knew for a fact that I hadn’t eaten it all yet there was no sign of the remaining slices anywhere.

This was ridiculous. I had just made a sandwich the other day. There had to be leftovers.

I pulled everything out of the refrigerator, but the ham had gone on the lam. Either I had thrown it out by mistake or a team of vigilante vegetarians had broken into my house in the dead of night and pulled the pork.

Neither scenario made any sense and that just made me angrier. How do you lose cold cuts, for God’s sake? I finally gave up the search, slapped together a back-up turkey sandwich and went to bed.

It wasn’t until I was washing the breakfast dishes the next goddamn morning that I realized what had happened to the ham.

I never bought it.

Yes, I had picked up some ham during the previous week, but not last week. I wasn’t recalling a memory of an actual incident. It was a summer rerun.

This was freaky. I distinctly remembered slicing up a tomato, getting out the bread and the mustard and making a sandwich. Only I hadn’t--at least, not lately.

And then again...

And this wasn’t the only memory miss. On Friday, I got up early to pick up some things my auntie’s apartment while she was out of town.

I was so proud of myself as I walked down the hallway toward her place. I was taking care of business, getting things done. And then I stopped dead in my tracks.

I had forgotten the keys.

I assumed—oh, that awful word—that they were on my key chain along with all my other keys, but I discovered much too late that I was wrong.

I stood there looking at the door to my aunt’s place like it was the monolith in 2001: A Space Odyssey.

There was no way in hell that was I going to get into that apartment. I had made the trip for nothing.

And who could forget the blueberries?

Well, me, apparently, because when I made my breakfast on Saturday, consisting of yogurt, fruit, and nuts, I forgot to include my favorite ingredient—the blueberries.

I took them out of the refrigerator. I put them down on the counter. And then I proceeded to make my breakfast without them.

I didn’t even miss them until I went back into the kitchen to clean up and saw them sitting there unloved and abandoned. These berries really were blue. I tried eating some after the fact, but it just wasn’t the same.

My auntie assures me that I’m okay and that I’ve just got too much on my mind. I hope she’s right. I’m not ready to cash out of the memory bank just yet.

But if you ever see me walking down the highway in my underwear with a wastepaper basket over my head, just wave some ham under my nose and point me towards Brooklyn.