THE GUYS IN THE FILE ROOM

Written about eight years ago. Reposting here.

I’m not that old. Honest. I can still lay claim to mid-forties. But I’ve started to develop a list of warning signs that I’m not keeping up. That I’m aging.

First, there’s pop culture. I might recognized one out of four hosts on Saturday Night Live. Next, there’s technology. I no longer have a knack for figuring out new technology or the patience to try and turn over our new cell phone or three TV remotes to my nine-year old daughter to explain. Then there’s the big one�"what used to be the old reliable file lroom known as memory. This has been a slow, sneaky, barely perceptible change but the hardest to accept.

I used to think I had a pretty good memory, like my own great Library of Congress. Picture a grand multi-storied room, well lit with towering shelves lined with tomes of information. Each subject had been painstakingly developed and ordered. Every day new periodicals and books, and miscellaneous facts were added under a well organized Dewey Decimal System. I imagined the small neurons of my brain like an energetic staff of well trained librarians and green-eye shaded file clerks. Request came in for the name of Magellan’s flagship or the fullback for the 1970 Cleveland Browns, these were information professionals who knew where to go and deliver the answer to the voice box department in a millisecond.

Long after friends had flushed the information down their short term memories, my clerks had filed away factoids from college, high school and even grade school classes. While I wasn’t much of a student grade-wise, my clerks rose to the occasion during competition and made sure I was on our high school’s “Academic Challenge” team�"the local TV show for competitive geeks.

Now I have this nagging feeling that things are changing. My personal Library of Congress is more dimly lit. The once young, energetic clerks who bounded from their chairs are not so quick to move. They shuffle along the stacks sometimes bumping into shelves or finding themselves lost in the wrong section. A whole conversation may be over by the time the requested information was retrieved and then it’s often incomplete. I even told a friend in conversation, “Wait a second, there’s something I want to add but the guys in my file room are still looking for it.”

Frankly, the library is becoming a mess. The clerks are not only getting slow they’re getting careless and forgetful. Even the best of them forget where they filed information on Emperor Penguin’s or Richard Nixon’s undergraduate college or my grandmother’s recipe for potato salad. They forget to properly label the files--I was trying to think of the name of a book the other day, and the clerk came back with Equatorial Bandits. My friend corrected me and said the real name was Tropical Gangsters.  In the most extreme cases,

You reach a point where you think you’ve reached your capacity. “If I push one more file onto the shelves,” I think, “something has to be sent to the discarded pile.” Will memorizing the account number for my medical insurance or the elements of the Parole Evidence Rule push my knowledge of Charles II off the shelf? Perhaps everyone’s file room only has only so much space. 

 

But others have more room and better trained clerks. Theodore Roosevelt’s memory was considered legendary. Congressman knew not to challenge him on facts and figures. He astounded a Hungarian Diplomat by reciting poetry from his home country that he had read only once twenty years before. He must have had the best clerks in the business .

I expect what my clerks have done resembles my home office  Books are double shelved or stacked on their sides; old newspapers and magazines thrown into wicker laundry baskets to serve as reading piles for later; files sit on top of the computer printer, in the closet or basement. New filing systems are started and forgotten about. I still have binders of college papers, old letters, and failed book manuscripts. Lose papers fall down behind cabinets only to be found months later.  In the worst cases, some clerks have gone half mad throwing arm loads of files from the shelves to light bonfires while dancing wildly around the flames.

 

Maybe a good mental library with a well-trained staff doesn’t matter you say. Now everybody has access to Google or Wikipedia. But having a good memory is faster and more reliable�"and not subject to pop-up ads.

There are some core facts that stay with me. The name of my forth grade teacher�"Mrs. Rudiger , my home address where I grew up -- 3716 -- and the fullback for the Cleveland Browns from 1970…uhm old what’s his name. I’ll think of it soon enough. They guys in the file room are working on it.

END

Reviews

[Delmar Cooper]

This was interesting and familiar- sadly familiar. I would class this type of writing as memoir. I think this is not an easy form for a lot of reasons. Yours was enjoyable. I liked the part about filling up the file room to the point where one piece of data must be ejected to accomodate any new tid bit. Conan Doyle had Holmes express this idea in "A Study in Scarlet." His was not a file room but an attic with inelastic walls.

“Wait a second, there’s something I want to add but the guys in my file room are still looking for it.”
I like this line. The French have a term for that cutting or essential remark you ONLY recall after the opportunity to use it has past, "La espirit de esclair" or something like that. Common and becoming more so for me every day.
Thanks for posting this.

[rutherford]

Thanks Delmar. I like the French expression.

[Michael G. Smith]

I'm always entertained by perspective on life and can sympathize with your frailties of age. I am in my mid forties and have accepted my memory loss choosing not to hide it or agonize over it like most men do. For some reason I can remember things that have to do with numbers by repeating them to myself one such as; addresses, phone numbers, drivers license, etc... but not any type of high level math. I notice it event memories that I have hard time with. I'm a big fan of the download site of Library of Congress "Libravox".

[rutherford]

Thanks Michael. WIll look for Libravox

[Woody]

what a delightful read! I'm shocked that this little gem hasn't attrackted hoards of reviewers.
the reason I like it so much is probably because I relate to it. your case is not unique. many middle-aged people suffer the same affliction but what a wonderful way to talk about it and what sense of humour!

thanks for sharing :)

[rutherford]

Glad you liked it. I'm a few years older since I wrote it and it's only getting worse. Thanks for kind words.