Talk of the Town - Blame it on the hippocampus July 10 2003

My entire life, I’m listening to memory-challenged men.

Now I am one.

More about that in a moment — if I can remember to tell you.

First there was Grandpa Slattery, watching “The Lawrence Welk Show” with Gram on a mid-1960s Saturday night.

“Who is that fella?” he’d ask, gesturing at the tiny black-and-white man feverishly pumping out “Lady of Spain” on a squeezebox.

“He’s the accordion player.” Gram was always helpful

“I know that. What’s his name? I can’t seem to recollect.”

“He’s an Italian.”

“Well that narrows it down. What else?”

“His last name ends in a vowel?”

Fast-forward three decades to a condo in Florida. My parents are watching Casablanca on Turner Classic Movies.

“Who is that guy?” Dad demands, pointing at the dapper black-and-white gent near Ingrid Bergman during the famous airport scene.

“Victor Laszlo?” Mom is always helpful.

“Not in the movie. The actor. In real life. ”

“He’s dead.”

“OK, so when he was alive. What was his name?”

“He lit the two cigarettes with Bette Davis,” says Ma, closing her eyes to channel the Old Film Gods. “In Now Voyager.”

“That’s right,” replies Inspector Pater, bolt upright in the Barcalounger, eyes aglitter at this carcinogenic case-cracking clue. “Keep going. Who is he?”

Mom finally confesses: “I don’t know.”

“Come on. It’s something French.”

“Louis Jourdan?”

“Louis Jourdan?” splutters Dad. “The guy from Gigi? He’s too young.” Louis Jourdan is 84. Only in Florida could he receive whippersnapper status.

Then the folks are off, trying and rejecting a dozen names of various people who: (a might have been actors; b) might have been French; c) were not Louis Jourdan. The debate spills onto the phone, when they call me to adjudicate.

“Paul Henreid,” I tell them. The Kid still knows his Casablanca.

“That’s it,” exhales my father. He can climb down from TriviaCon 1.

Mom is grateful. Because she knows my father would not rest or talk about anything else until the errant celebrity name came to mind — usually at 3 a.m., when he wakes her up with the information. Gramps was the same. Women in our family have always and ever been sleep deprived. Across the years, this was a source of amusing anecdote, stories of my relatives and their crankily bad collective memory. Until, somewhere at the crest of that hill numbered 40, I went the same way.

Scientists blame the hippocampus, the part of the brain (and you thought it was a college for large mammals from Africa) that serves as a switching station for one’s train of memories. After age 35, the recollection-laden boxcars have trouble getting out of the station.

Take the time we went to see The Shipping News.

“That’s the guy from The Full Monty, ” I whispered to the missus, as a lanky widow’s-peaked fella emoted on screen.

She nodded. She doesn’t talk during a movie.

“What’s his name?” I asked.

She shushed me. But it was false bravado. I knew she didn’t know. But unlike my mother and grandmother, she runs a good offense.

“I don’t know why you care about his name,” she huffed to my repeated query. “Because I don’t think you ever knew it.”

“Whaddaya mean?”

“Just what I said.”

I couldn’t admit it, but when the final credits rolled, the actor’s name — Tom Wilkinson --didn’t sound familiar. Had I forgotten it, or not remembered in the first place? If you’re memory is getting bad, you’ll never know. Because even if you did remember, you forgot.

It’s even worse when we rent movies. Movies you actually go out for tend to register in the mind. You watch them without interruption.

But renting? Who can remember what happened or who was who in those movies? You’re up to go to the bathroom, the doorbell rings, your neighbors rev up their chainsaw and you can’t hear a thing, you sit through lunch, dinner and breakfast on Saturday going into Sunday, watching a 108-minute movie in bits and pieces across 22 hours.

And so I keep asking, “Who’s that guy?” It’s all part of family tradition. Since time immemorial, Slattery men have badgered their consorts for forgotten names. I picture my great-great-grandparents back on the Old Sod:

“What was the name of Paddy O’Dooley’s horse?

“The mare?”

“No, the bay.”

“Old Dan?’

“Old Dan? Get on with ye. What kind of name is that fer a horse? It was somethin’ like Old Jim, except mebbe it was Young Jim.”

Yes, that’s how it must have been. Or my name isn’t Glen ...

Oh, damn.

glen.slattery@creativeloafing.com


Glen Whatsisname lives out in Alphawhatever.