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Opinion Ros Thomas Opinion Ros Thomas

Mind Games

I stood uneasily in the cavernous carpark, marooned in a concrete mausoleum. I steered my trolley left and right around grids of pillars and bays. No boxy black station wagon announced itself with the press of my key; no tail lights winked their happiness to see me. I had lost my car in the supermarket carpark. Separation anxiety set in.

After several more minutes of rising panic, I went into hyperdrive. ‘This can’t be happening,’ I chided myself. ‘How could I forget where I parked my car?’

I replayed my arrival an hour earlier: I’d driven off the street, down the ramp, turned left and lucked a space close to the escalator. My brain seized upon ‘escalator.’ That’s it! There are two them in this shopping centre: one at each end of the carpark. I was circling the wrong escalator.

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Opinion Ros Thomas Opinion Ros Thomas

Down Memory Lame

I have been cursed with forgetting. I forget new names and old acquaintances. I forget what people do and who they’re doing it with. I have sudden panics at the supermarket when a face I know (attached to a name I don’t) stops me at the fish counter: “How are you? It’s been ages! Have you seen any of the gang lately?”

Gang? With rising panic, I point to the seafood display and launch headlong into an embarrassing non sequitur: “No, I haven’t seen the gang lately, but hey! Have you ever seen such sad little prawns, I bet they got bullied at school for being shrimps!” Good grief! – I keep up this moronic prattle whilst simultaneously pleading with my brain to please, please deliver the name of this person. Then at least I can spare her (and me) the agony of my tediously inane small talk.

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