Pavlovian

The audiologist in my building (a cool guy) says I possess something called eidetic memory. I said I do not possess any such thing and no one can prove otherwise! But he said it was a good thing - relating to the ability to remember a lot of things, sometimes by sense memory. As in, I don't have a bloodhound's sense of smell, but if you take me back to my junior high school cafeteria, it probably still reeks of the pungent floor wax they used back in my day. And reading the Information Please Almanac as a youth filled my noggin with useful items such as Donna Reed's real name (Donna Mullenger) and biographies of some lesser-known US presidents (James Polk, we hardly knew ye.)

What's weird is that I can recall minutiae from long ago, unimportant factoids that take up space in my melon that really ought to be used by the name of our insurance agent (Mike Somebody?), where my spare sunglasses are (a booth at Applebees?) and how to replace a garbage disposal (call a plumber?) It used to be that I remembered names for a day or two, and now it's down to where I meet someone new and by the end of the conversation I can't remember their name. As Edd "Kookie" Byrnes (born Edward Byrne Breitenberger) used to say, I've got smog in my noggin.

But on the second floor of the building, one of the offices has one of those bells that is the same kind of bell that we had at the good old A&P, in the days when the shoppers would ding the bell and whichever clerk was close by in the store, loading eggs or cheese or preparing a handful of whipped cream to be dumped on an unsuspecting coworker from atop the dairy cooler (I know nothing about that), would scoot over and grind the coffee for them. I hear that bell when I walk past that office, and I still involuntarily whirl around to see if anyone needs their coffee ground.

What's really troubling is that last week, two people did!