I blame it all on them

When I was a kid, I ruled at MEMORY.  Seriously, I was untouchable.  You picked up the shoe?  Oh I’ll remember where it is.  Ten minutes could pass and I’d still remember where that shoe sat, patiently waiting for me to find it’s match.  Oh yes, my friends – I was hardcore.

I remember vividly sitting on the floor in my bedroom, my Walkman firmly placed over my ears, Leslie Gore’s greatest hits blaring (I was only allowed to listen to Christian songs or Oldies so I tended to rock out to Leslie Gore with all the fervor that my scrawny little body allowed).  I was usually bundled up against the frigid Wisconsin chill that seemed to permeate the air 10 out of 12 months every year.

I was usually seated on the floor next to my black and white bed with the hot pink and torquoise accent pillows.  They matched, of course, the black, white, turqouise and hot pink wallpaper border  in the cream colored room.  Ah, the eighties were grand weren’t they?

I would spread those memory cards out and play against myself, all the while belting out “It’s My Party and I’ll Cry if I Want To,” at the top of my lungs.  Sometimes my parents or my brother would join me, perhaps in an effort to get me to stop singing…

Huh…

Whatever the case, I welcomed their company because it gave me a chance to show them who was MEMORY boss.  Oh yes – I was an unstopable force.

Fast forward 25 years to today as I sat with my kids and played MEMORY.  We also were fighting off a November chill, though it was decidedly less dramatic than the Wisconsin chill in my past.  Michael Jackson’s Greatest Hits blared through the MP3 player (my musical standards are significantly lower than my parents were.  Although I guess for my kids, Michal Jackson falls under the umbrella of Oldies.  That’s depressing…)

And I got my butt kicked today.  By Tia, then by Sloan.

Even though I cheated and peeked at some of the cards as we were setting the game up, I still lost by a rather significant margin.

I blame it on the kids.  My mind was like a vault before I had kids.  I nearly had a photographic memory, which came in handy in college.  I never needed a calendar or a day planner because I could remember dates and events without a reminder.  Studying?  I was a master crammer.  I could visualize words on a page and regurgitate them on a test (as long, of course, as that test was in written form.  If numbers or equations were involved I was totally screwed.)

These days I’m happy if I remember to take off my slippers and put on real shoes before I leave the house.

I think pregnancy kills brain cells.  Then there’s the pushing, in which whole sections of the brain simply die.  And the parts of the brain that were still firing on full capacity?  Those areas are severely handicapped by the lack of sleep.  Thus leaving you with only half a brain that’s only half functioning.  So clearly us moms are at a severe disadvantage!

 And then there are the hours and hours of kids songs, cartoons, Veggie Tales, Elmo and a whole variety of images and sounds the seems to stimulate our children yet drive us deeper into a semi-comatose state where we can no longer remember if today is Tuesday or Wednesday and what time does the bus come and when is that pizza party that I volunteered to help with?

Yeah, I blame it on them.  That’s why my memory is completely shot.  But I won’t tell them that.  Oh no.  I’ll let them think that they won simply because mommy was being nice.  There’s no need for them to think any different.

Right?