Absent minded professor

It is my good fortune that the acts of breathing and pumping blood are involuntary actions. For if they were deliberate actions, I would have had a long life spanning 30 minutes at the most.

The problem is that I cannot remember the most routine activities on a daily basis. For example, I've been wearing a wristwatch since the age of 13; and yet after 16 years, I still, oftentimes, forget to wear it when I head out to work in the mornings. My wife says, "Can you do while I go take a shower?" I do hear it, I do understand what she is saying,¹ and, in fact, I would've responded in the affirmative, "Yes dear, I will take care of it."²

It is not like I've a poor memory. In fact, compared to many people, I come across as having an elephantine or photographic memory. I can remember snippets of very casual conversations (over Instant Messaging, that is the only kind of conversation I've been known to be capable of) from two years ago down to the last minute detail. I can remember roads and locations just by driving through it once. And yet I cannot remember to pay my electricity bill without a dozen reminders. I cannot remember to post the mail-in rebate offer until almost the deadline, regardless of the fact that I would've filled the form the day it arrived, attached the UPC code and put it in an envelope and sealed it. But it would sit there in my desk gathering dust because I would not have a stamp handy to mail it off right away. And pretty quickly, it would be buried under a pile of electronics like hard drives, video cards, memory chips, etc.³

Oh! Another good one: charging my cell phone battery. One would think that after 5 years of owning a cell phone, you'd get used to the mundane routine of putting it on the charger every night or so. But not me! You'd not believe the number of times someone tried to reach me and the phone was off because it was low on battery and they think that I'm deliberately avoiding their calls or screening calls.⁴

I started wondering about my inability to remember routine tasks on the long and boring metro ride to Fairfax, VA, after I realized that I'd forgotten my watch. So I pulled out my cell phone only to find that it had turned itself off because the battery had no charge. The first thought that came to my mind was: absent minded professor. So naturally, I wanted to blame it all on the soul-sucking effect that a PhD has on a person. But unfortunately for me, the very same PhD had trained me to spot logical inconsistencies in a theory faster than a speeding bullet.⁵ How can I blame it on PhD if I've had these symptoms ever since I can remember.

May be the reason is I'm always lost in thought... daydreaming is more like it. I am always thinking about imaginary situations, mostly complicated conundrums, some physics equations that I read about on the internet, figuring out how to solve a particular problem on the computer in at least five different programming languages, or trying to choreograph to a song that is playing at that particular moment in my head.

I doubt there is a cure for daydreaming. Luckily for me, my epitaph won't say, "Here lies a man who dreamt himself to death," because I asphyxiated during a daydreaming session, forgetting to perform the voluntary act of breathing.

¹ Yes, I do understand what my wife is saying. Well, most of the time.

² Sorry, the last part was a bit of dramatization. I still haven't taught myself the art of punctuating the responses to my beloved with phrases like "yes dear" and "honey" or its shortened counterpart "hon."

³ Why do you look at me like that? Normal people do have those lying around on their desk, don't they?

⁴ Yes, I'm a recluse and don't like to talk on the phone. But that will be the topic for another day.

⁵ That is right, kids, PhD makes you the superman of smelling bullshit in publications. At least, it will give you an ego big enough to pooh-pooh other theories which aren't built upon yours and don't cite your publications at least thrice in their publications.