The Forgotten Power
‘Remember’ or ‘set a reminder’
“Hey dear, get up. It is getting late for office,” I heard my wife shouting from the living room. Of course, she was not exactly shouting but that was how it felt when disturbed in the middle of something enjoyable, especially sleep. I continued lying on my bed and pretended to not hear her.
“Don’t you have a meeting today? I thought you had told me so, a few days ago,” she said.
“She is very clever in disturbing my sleep by reminding me about work,” I wondered, still enjoying my morning nap.
I heard her footsteps approaching the bedroom, and pretended to sleep tight. She patted me gently, telling “wake up honey, wake up.” I acted perfectly, pretending that I was hearing her voice for the first time since morning. I was pretty good at this.
“It’s getting late for you,” she said pointing at the wall clock hanging right beside my bed.
“Yes, it is,” I spoke for the first time.
I quickly showered, dressed up and started to office munching my toast as I drove.
A couple of hours later, after a long meeting, I stood silently listening to my manager’s rant with all my energy drained.
“How can you be so careless? You knew how important this meeting was, yet you were late. What do you think of yourself?” he taunted me.
“Sorry, I had completely forgotten about it,” I said to him quietly.
“It’s your responsibility, we have to finish this in two days,” he declared sternly.
“Sure,” I said and walked to my cabin. I checked my desk calendar, and indeed I had marked the day of the meeting. “Shit, I completely forgot about it,” I cursed myself. I wondered how my wife had reminded me correctly about it. I had a very tough day and it was very late in the evening when I finally left for home.
“Am home!” I announced as I entered and collapsed on the sofa in the living room.
“Hon! Am ready,” my wife said as she stood before me well dressed. I didn’t understand, and I didn’t know what her plan was.
“Ready? Where?” I asked her.
“You had promised to take me to dinner today.”
“Did I? When?” I asked her with a look of astonishment.
“What happened to you, dear? You aren’t normal these days. Are you still upset about losing your mobile phone?” she asked me.
“No- no, nothing like that. But I seriously don’t know about our dinner plan today,” I convinced her.
“But this is not the first time, we always plan for dinner on this day,” she said and moved away.
“This is getting depressing,” I pondered. “It had all started with the practice of tracking my day-to-day activities on my mobile — important events, meetings, plan for the day, contact list, document, driving routes, and even passwords. And now I am suffering from short-term memory loss because I had lost my mobile a few days back. I realized that, as technology developed, it has affected humanity in many ways. The most important being it is slowly eating our brain. Before using mobile phones, I used to remember many numbers, but now I don’t know even know my wife’s. Thankfully she never knew about it,” I smiled thinking about it. From then on, I decided not to set any reminder for my daily activities.
We were in our favourite restaurant having dinner. I tried hard to switch the topic, and we had a great time. We enjoyed our dish and she was very happy.
“Sorry,” I said to her.
“Keep forgetting things, so I would get many great days like today,” she replied with a smile.
“But how did you remember my meeting?” I asked her.
“You said, you have a meeting on our wedding anniversary,” she said.
“Oh great!” I said amazed by her memory.
“Hey wait a minute, is today our wedding anniversary?” this time I had really fucked up.
