lopside

Did I tell you I diagnosed my fatal flaw? One has time to think when chasing magazines up and down cramped stairways and keeping one hand in a back pocket, just in case. Perhaps fatal flaw is too pejorative. Roadblock. I've been in the business of whittling down lately, like the wardrobe full of sweaters I'll never wear. And whittling down my appetite, and the extent of my scheming about (A) but not (B). But what I'm getting at is, I'm whittling down my pile of failings to the heart of the thing: I think, humbly, that I'm not stupid. I'm quick. But here's the rub—although my mind belongs in the category of (at least a little) above average, my MEMORY certainly does not. I might not be wholly anchorless, totally unaffected by what I knew and do know and see and hear, but my ability to anchor—my ability to retain and organize the things I learn—is the ability of someone below average intellect. If I had a memory to match my raw brain, I'd be someone else entirely. Probably, I'd be my brother. My mind gets a B and my memory gets a D, and what the hell, why would I be made like this? Wouldn't I be happier if they met in the middle and I was two Cs? I have time to think about such things, and I'm learning to write my discoveries down, because if I don't, in a month, I'll be heading in a direction quite the opposite.