I still know the difference between coming and going but have to work harder on names.

I’ve been noticing that I have to think harder.

Not because I can’t solve problems, but because I remember the wrong stuff.

I’ve always been a trivia buff and sometimes wish I could dump some of that gunk out of my head.

I can remember that card #1 of the 1952 Topps baseball card set is Andy Pafko, but I have to keep repeating to myself that I need to buy a new flapper for the toilet tank.

My long term memory is still sharp, but I wish I could purge my brain of some of it.

Add to that, no less than 20 flapper choices ranging in price from $6 to $20! I spent way too much time at the hardware store today.

I settled on the TOTO for $15 – made in the USA, USA, USA.

Alvin Toffler wrote “Future Shock” in 1970. The book is about personal perceptions of “too much change in too short a period of time”.

Alvin Toffler’s “Future Shock” came out when I was in high school. It was quite prophetic.

Ain’t that the truth.

My too-many-flappers conundrum is future shock come to pass and I notice I spend too much brain power on cluttered decisions like this.

“There have been a lot of advancements over the years,” the green – vested McGuckin plumbing department guy said of his collection of rubber plugs to keep toilet tanks full of water until the next flush.

I had too many flapper choices, but the one I bought, did the trick.

Add unexpected flapperology lessons to my lack of motivation and general lethargy arising from my illness recovery over the past few months and it’s a double whammy.

As a hedge against my future shock, folks encouraged me to arrange the clutter by writing lists for this and that.

I began to jot things down in a calendar book like meetings and dentist appointments appointments, but write a list?

Fuhgettaboutit!

Will someone find me a pen?

My first batch of green chili turned out, thanks to the readily available fresh veggies.

I started cooking more food from scratch and use recipes from allrecipes.com mostly because the mobile phone app works pretty well in the food store, with or without WiFi.

The parts list is at my fingertips.

Tonight, I tried my hand at a pot of green chili. In the olden days – 10 years ago, even – it was not possible to cook dishes like this because of the limited number of oddball ingredients that were available in the average grocery store. For instance, I needed:
– jalapeño peppers
– anaheim peppers
– tomatillos

While reading recipes, I could tell the older ones because they called for x-number of cans – Ortega green chiles.

The food stores stock lots of product that didn’t used to be offered.

Safeway now offers peppers galore – pablano, habanero, banana, orange ones, yellow ones, red ones, those long slender ones you get on Chicago dogs.

The chili was good, but turned out a little spicier than I thought and I’ll tweak the recipe for the faint of heart. I used to improvise a lot, but have since learned that there’s a lot of chemistry involved in cooking, and not everything has to have tomato sauce in it.

I’ve not only started keeping a virtual recipe box, I keep my contact list up to date to help me remember people. I’m still pretty good with names, but I have to repeat them to myself more than in the past.

When I see people after a year, I can remember when we met, where we met, what they do for work. Sometimes, sometimes not, the name will come to me.

It’s very frustrating.

I learned from my nonprofit development director days that there are very expensive computer programs written to keep track of donors and prospects. I use my phone contact list to remind me about people.

I started keeping a hard copy record after I heard a couple nightmares about losing contact info in the “cloud.”

When I go places now, I have to study who may be there. I could just ask people their name, but that’s no fun.

My neighbor, Henry, says that proper name memory is the first to go – something to do with the hippocampus. That’s a bit reassuring.

Jerry Seinfeld had trouble remembering his girl friend’s name that rhymes with a female body part.

This reminds me of the Seinfeld episode when Jerry can’t remember his girlfriend’s name that rhymes with a part of the female anatomy.

There’s an Alzheimer’s disease ad playing on TV about a husband that finds his wife’s car keys in the fridge.

So far, I haven’t done anything like that, but then again, I’ve been misplacing things for years like my wallet, phone, coats. I always have gotten everything back, though.

When that luck runs out, I should start worrying.

In the meantime, I’ll just go with my future shock flow and keep absorbing baseball trivia, keep my choices simple and remember names by way of mnemonic devices.

“Oh … DELORES!”