I’ll be damned if this isn’t the weirdest thing.
Science has finally explained why we forget things.
It’s the doors.
Just like walking under a ladder causes bad luck, going through a door makes you forget things.
It’s amazing how it always turns out to be something simple.
I suppose this requires some explanation before you start throwing stones.
Let’s start with an example: You’re sitting in your comfy chair in the living room and notice a dirty coffee cup on the table next to you.
I don’t notice those things, but you might.
It bothers you because you’re a neat freak or the wife will scold you.
How it got there is not important.
You pick it up and head for the kitchen.
By the time you get there, you’ve forgotten why you went in there in the first place, and you wander back to your chair all confused — until you look down and see…the cup.
Okay, fess up.
We all have arrived somewhere only to say, “Now what the hell was I coming here for?”
Scientists at Notre Dame say they have the answer…and it’s not a senior moment.
This is surprising because I didn’t think they did much besides play football.
Their scientific paper’s title says it all: “Walking through doorways causes forgetting.”
How they arrived at this is way too long and convoluted to go into here.
Let’s leave it at this: a lot of students were used to pick up a lot of things and walk through a lot of doors.
Science can be messy.
Here’s their conclusion…memory was worse after passing through a doorway than after walking the same distance without going through a door.
The whole thing is confusing to read about, much less do.
They had the students sometimes pick up something, walk through a door, and then walk through a second door that brought them either to a new room or back to the first room.
Are you still with me?
Anyway, by the time they hit the second door they apparently were all loopy.
Something I get just walking to the bathroom.
Here’s my simple explanation: The doorway effect seems to show there’s more to remembering than just what you paid attention to, when it happened, and how hard you tried.
Parts of your memory appears to be designed to keep information handy until its shelf life expires, and then dumps it in favor of new stuff.
In other words, there’s only so much room and new stuff pushes out old stuff.
So, all you old folks out there – things are looking up.
Science has shown you’re not going brain-dead.
It’s that you have so much stuff in your head from all your years it just takes longer to zero in on what you want.
Now science is saying everyone has senior moments, even the kids.
Life is looking up.
Stop being grumpy.
