Did I forget something?

I haven’t used my credit card in ages and ages. Last month for the first time, I was shown an outstanding amount of $20 which was the annual fees for the card.

I forgot to pay because most of the times I don’t even remember that I own a credit card. Finally today I remembered and logged on only to find that the bank charged me $35 as late fees yesterday. How frustrating is that? Paying 175% (or whatever…do the maths) interest on the annual fees of a card I have not used more than 5 times in five years. All because I forgot about it one day more than I was allowed to.

When I got to thinking about it, I realized that I have been putting too many reminders in my phone of late. And most of the times I forget the task in spite of that.

That got me thinking about absent-mindedness. Now Mother is constantly reminding me how my memory is worse than that of a 90-year-old. But why? Then I remembered, a lot of the folks on my father’s side are that way. Does it run in the family? Can absent-mindedness be hereditary? I googled it. One of the search results was a site that said that absent-mindedness can be a cute trait. Obviously not the site I am looking for. Cute! Tell that to my mother and my aunts who have to deal with a bunch of forgetful men and children (I think it is hereditary).

Opened up a couple of websites (University websites, no less). Not helpful.

Then there was a US government website of medicine and health. Looked more promising. Opened the page and it listed a number of research articles. Did a ctrl-F to look for absent-mindedness. Ah, there it was!

The title read: “Absent-mindedness and shop-lifting - a case study”.

Umm…next.

The next one was: “Alleged shoplifters and psychiatric outpatients: drugs, absent-mindedness and mental state compared”.

Right…

If you think about it, I don’t think absent-mindedness is such a big deal anyway. I mean, if it was, surely there would be counselling centres for abused family members of affected people, or Absents Anonymous and things like that, isn’t it?