by Tom Friedman
NO HAIR APPARENT
John Drew, a comic stage actor, once shaved off his mustache, dramatically changing his appearance. Soon after, he met Max Beerbohm, the English satirist, whom he failed to remember. Beerbohm, on the other hand, remembered the American. “Mr. Drew,” he said, “I’m afraid you don’t recognize me without your mustache.”
OR MAYBE YOU SHOULD GIVE POLITICS A TRY
In 1943, Warner Bros. released the musical comedy This Is the Army, written by Irving Berlin and costarring First Lieutenant Ronald Reagan. During the first week of shooting, Reagan was introduced to Berlin five different times, and Berlin said the same thing each time: “Young man, I just saw some of your work. You’ve got a few things to correct—for example, a huskiness of the voice—but you really should give this business some consideration when the war is over.” Reagan had already been working in Hollywood for six years.
MAKING DEMOCRACY ALMOST WORK
Herbert Connolly remembered to do almost everything a politician could do to win a seat on the Massachusetts Governors Council in 1988. He campaigned hard, even on the day of the election. He made speeches everywhere. He shook thousands of hands. He personally urged everyone he met to rush to the polls. He forgot just one small thing: to get to his own neighborhood polling station before it closed so he could vote for himself. Nevertheless, with all his hard work, he got 14,715 votes. Unfortunately, his opponent got 14,716.
AT LEAST WE GOT THE NUMBERS RIGHT
Some misspellings are so impressive that they’re way up there on the “senior moments scale.” Consider the case of the highway sign erected in 2009 on Interstate 39 near the towns of Rothschild and Schofield in Wisconsin. The only word that was spelled correctly was the first. It read, exit 185 buisness 51 rothschield schofeild.
IT WAS, PERHAPS, THE BEST FAMILY I’VE EVER TASTED
King Edward VII, Britain’s king from 1901 to 1910, once tried to remember a visit he made to the home of Colonel James Biddle, during which he was served a dish of seasoned pork and cornmeal hardened into a loaf, then sliced and fried, known as scrapple. “In Philadelphia, when I was the Prince of Wales, I met a large and interesting family named Scrapple,” he recalled hazily. “They served me a rather delicious native food, too—something, I believe, called Biddle.”
GUYS—THEY’RE ALL ALIKE
In 2006, Guy Goma, who had moved from Congo to England, was thrilled to get an interview with the BBC for a job as an entry-level information technology (IT) assistant. As Goma sat in a waiting room, another Guy, Guy Kewney, a well-known IT consultant, was also at the station, waiting to be interviewed on live television. But when an absentminded assistant arrived, he led the wrong Guy to the studio. After greeting Goma, the TV interviewer wasted no time, asking him if he thought more people would now be downloading content online. Goma gamely tried to answer: “I think it is much better for the development and . . . uh . . . to inform people what they want and to get the easy way and so faster if they are looking for.” (Goma was finally interviewed for the IT job afterward, but sadly, even after his 15 minutes of TV fame, he wasn’t hired.)
WHILE WE’RE AT IT, LET’S CHANGE GRANTHAM TO . . . GRANTHAM!
In the late 1980s the town of Grantham, New Hampshire, finally decided to clear up the confusion that two streets with similar names, Stoney Brook Drive and Stoney Brook Lane, caused its residents. But the Grantham town council then forgot the point of renaming the streets in the first place, dubbing them Old Springs Drive and Old Springs Lane.
AH! THAT WOULD EXPLAIN THE STRANGE HAT I’M WEARING
Pope John XXIII, who was pontiff from 1958 until his death in 1963, once said that while he was falling asleep, important thoughts would drift through his mind and he would try to make a mental note: “I must speak to the pope about that.” Then, he explained, “I would be wide awake and remember, ‘I am the pope!’”
NOW, THAT’S ACTING
One day the famous British actor John Gielgud was dining in a restaurant with a well-known playwright when Gielgud spied someone he thought he recognized. “Did you see that man just coming in?” he asked his companion. “He’s the biggest bore in London, second only to Edward Knoblock.” It was precisely at that moment that he realized that the man sitting across from him was none other than Edward Knoblock. “Not you, of course,” Gielgud quickly added. “I mean the other Edward Knoblock.”
NO DOMESTIC PAWN
In 1937, chess master George Koltanowski simultaneously defeated thirty-four players while blindfolded, a world record. But when he died, his wife Leah said that Koltanowski never once remembered to bring home bread from the grocery.
AND THAT’S SPELLED L-A-M-P-E
After German philosopher Immanuel Kant fired his longtime servant, Lampe, he feared that the man would remain in his memory forever. A little guilt, perhaps? So Kant wrote in his journal, “Remember in the future the name of Lampe must be completely forgotten.”
HOW CAN I BE SURE?
Jesse Lasky, whose career as a Hollywood producer and studio executive stretched from 1913 to 1951, was making a speech welcoming French actor and singer Maurice Chevalier at a dinner in New York when he kept losing his place. Each time, he looked up in confusion and said, “Now where was I?” He did this so many times that comedian George Jessel finally called out, “You’re at the Hotel Astor and your name is Jesse Lasky.”
I’D LIKE TO MEET THAT MAN SOME DAY
Franz Schubert’s friends were amazed that he often seemed to be in a trance when he wrote music and afterward did not remember what he had done. One day the baritone Vogl sang one of Schubert’s songs, and when he was finished, Schubert exclaimed, “That’s not bad! Who wrote it?”
SPACE, THE FINAL FRONTIER OF MEMORY LAPSES—MISSION 1
University of Idaho scientist David Atkinson devoted much of his working life to designing an experiment for an unmanned European space mission to Saturn. The mission was to measure the winds on Titan, Saturn’s largest moon. In 1997, the probe was launched. Eight years later, on January 14, 2005, Atkinson and his team waited anxiously for the first data to arrive. And then waited, and waited some more to no avail. Too bad someone forgot to turn on the measuring equipment before the takeoff all those years before.
IN THAT CASE I’M GOING TO MOVE TO ANOTHER TINY PACIFIC ISLAND NATION!
Edward Natapei, the prime minister of the tiny Pacific island nation of Vanuatu, lost his seat in Parliament, and thus his position as prime minister, all because of absentmindedness. Natapei missed three straight parliamentary sessions in 2009 while he was at an overseas conference. The problem? Under Vanuatu law, he was supposed to submit a written explanation for his absence to the country’s parliamentary speaker, which he forgot to do.
THE WORD IS “CONFUSED”
Allen Ludden, the host of the TV game show Password, had a senior moment on the air that must have confused even the most adept puzzle solver: “Just remember, folks,” he announced, “next Monday night’s Password will be seen on Thursday evening.”
AND WHENEVER I SAY ST. PAUL, I’LL MEAN MINNEAPOLIS
Dr. William Archibald Spooner, the absentminded Anglican priest and Oxford University administrator who gave his name to the linguistic lapses called “spoonerisms,” once concluded a sermon by stating, “In the sermon I have just preached, whenever I said Aristotle, I meant St. Paul.”
THEY BOTH BEGIN WITH THE LETTER M, RIGHT?
If you do the same thing over and over until it becomes a reflex, beware of the consequences—it can lead to an embarrassing bout of absentmindedness. Consider the case of race car driver Lewis Hamilton. When he was just 10 years old, he told the founder of McLaren Automotive, the manufacturer of high performance vehicles, that he wanted to race for the company when he grew up. Four years later he joined McLaren’s program for young drivers. In 2007, he made his Formula One debut, driving a McLa
ren. In 2008, he became world champion—for McLaren. And so in 2013, during a Grand Prix race in Malaysia, Hamilton pulled into the McLaren pit for a routine change of tires. There was just one problem: He was now driving for Mercedes.
WAIT, WHAT HAPPENED TO THE ACCORDION SOLO?
Fans of Lawrence Welk’s easy-listening music were the victims of an especially cruel senior moment when some 10,000 copies of Welk’s CD Polka Party were mislabeled. They were actually copies of the sound track to the film Sid and Nancy about the life and death of notorious punk rocker Sid Vicious.
AND THEN I PUT MY HEAD THROUGH THE WINDSHIELD, JUST FOR THE HELL OF IT
The year 1977 was a big one for senior moments involving Canadian drivers. According to the Toronto Sun, one driver, filling out an insurance claim form, explained his mishap this way: “Coming home I drove into the wrong house and collided with a tree I don’t have.” About the same time, another unfortunate driver wrote on his claim form, “I thought my window was down but I found out that it was up when I put my head through it.”
CLEARLY HE WAS SAFER IN PRISON
In 2009, the newly appointed head of London’s Metropolitan Police, Sir Paul Stephenson, personally led an early morning raid to catch the leader of a notorious burglary ring. Eighty officers swooped down on a suspected hideout as a police helicopter hovered overhead. Next, a battering ram made quick work of the front door. It was only when the police got inside that Sir Paul learned that the ringleader wasn’t actually there. It seems no one remembered to do a final search of the police database to make sure of his whereabouts. If they had, they would have learned that he was already in prison, having been arrested five hours earlier in another raid carried out by constables from the local precinct.
ON THE WHOLE, I’D RATHER BE IN THE BLACK
Terrified of finding himself in a strange city without money, W. C. Fields opened a bank account in every town he visited. Moreover, he used a different name for each account because he was fearful of being robbed. Unfortunately, because he never bothered to write down the aliases, he eventually forgot all but 23 of them—out of an estimated 700.
GENERAL MEMORY LOSS
Sir William Erskine was a senior commander under the Duke of Wellington. During one of Erskine’s more appalling senior moments, he was found eating dinner instead of defending a strategic bridge. He later had second thoughts about neglecting the bridge, but dispatched only five men. When an officer expressed his concern that the bridge wasn’t sufficiently defended, Erskine changed his mind again and decided he would send an entire regiment. He wrote a note to himself as a reminder, put it in his pocket, and then forgot all about it.
IT COULD HAVE BEEN WORSE—HE COULD HAVE LEFT OUT THE SECOND “H”
Dan O’Connor, a rabid Notre Dame football fan, decided to have the team’s slogan, “Fighting Irish,” tattooed on his arm. But the tattoo artist picked the wrong time to have a senior moment. Even with the design right in front of him, he inscribed the words, “Fighing Irish.” O’Connor, who filed a suit for damages, reportedly said, “You’re not talking about a dented car where you can get another one. You’re talking about flesh.”
THE THIRD ANNUAL G. K. CHESTERTON AWARD FOR ABSENTMINDEDNESS GOES TO . . . G. K. CHESTERTON!
English writer G. K. Chesterton was especially baffled by trains. He once went up to a ticket window at a railroad station and asked the mystified agent for a cup of coffee, then retired to the station restaurant to wait for his train and tried to buy a ticket from the waiter.
WE WERE SO DESPERATE, WE DIDN’T EVEN BOTHER TO READ THEM FIRST
Entrepreneur Richard Branson, the founder of Virgin Records, Virgin America Airlines, Virgin Atlantic, and Virgin Mobile, is famous for his love of adventure. Having forgotten to take one essential item on an around-the-world balloon expedition, he offered this advice to fellow thrill-seekers: “If you’re embarking around the world in a hot-air balloon, don’t forget the toilet paper. Once, we had to wait for incoming faxes.”
I’LL HAVE A POUND OF MAINSPRINGS, PLEASE
James Herriot was known for his absentmindedness in his small English village. When the famed veterinarian-turned-writer of All Creatures Great and Small arrived at the local butcher’s shop with a broken clock under his arm, and then stood in front of the counter lost in thought, the butcher wasn’t at all surprised. He just waited patiently for Herriot to order his usual pound of sausages. When Herriot finally snapped out of his reverie, he looked down and noticed the clock. Realizing that he was in the wrong shop, he nodded politely at the butcher and then, without a word, turned around and left.
DO NOT TAKE YOUR EYES OFF MY PLUME, SOLDIER, AND THAT’S AN ORDER
Alexander Borodin was a general in the Russian army, as well as a famous composer, chemist, and doctor. He once walked out of his home in full military dress. His jacket was adorned with medals, he wore a plumed helmet, and everything else necessary for a full-dress parade—except, that is, for his pants.
AND THAT’S WHEN I FIGURED OUT THAT WRITING THE WORDS WAS GOING TO BE EASIER THAN REMEMBERING THEM
The English novelist Paul Baily was once an actor, playing in Richard III at Stratford-upon-Avon, with Christopher Plummer in the leading role. In Act III, Scene V, Baily, playing the role of Lovell, was supposed to say, “Here is the head of that ignoble traitor, the dangerous and unsuspected Hastings.” But one night, he couldn’t remember the line at all. Plummer stared at him “for what seemed like ten minutes,” Baily later said, and then Plummer declared, “Is that the head of that ignoble traitor, the dangerous and unsuspected Hastings?” to which the grateful Baily replied, to everyone’s relief, “Yes.”
GIVE OR TAKE A FEW ZEROS
Something must have slipped the collective mind of the former New York investment firm Bear Stearns when it ordered the sale of $4 billion worth of stock instead of the correct amount, $4 million, a 1,000-fold mistake. After its hideously expensive senior moment, the company was able to recover only about 85 percent of the mistakenly sold stock. And to think that a Bear Stearns advertisement had just boasted of the firm’s ability to “execute complex transactions flawlessly.”
AT LEAST HE’LL HAVE TIME TO VISIT CARDIFF’S OFFICIAL DOCTOR WHO SHOP
In 2007, Dave Barclay was determined to attend the July 6 wedding of his close friend, Dave Best. So he paid $1,000 for his plane ticket from Toronto to Wales (a hefty sum for a teacher) and cheerfully arrived in the Cardiff airport on July 6. He promptly asked for directions, and got to the venue eager for the great event, only to learn that he had forgotten to read his friend’s invitation carefully. As it turned out, the wedding was scheduled for July 6 all right, but in 2008.
WHAT ARE YOU SAYING—THAT NEWSPAPERS DON’T DELIVER THEMSELVES?
In 1965, publisher Lionel Burleigh launched the Commonwealth Sentinel, which, he claimed, would be “Britain’s most fearless newspaper.” Burleigh was staying at London’s Brown’s Hotel, frantically preparing for the paper’s debut, when he received a call from the police: “Do you have anything to do with the Commonwealth Sentinel? Because there are 50,000 [copies] outside the hotel entrance and they’re blocking the street.” It seems that Burleigh had completely forgotten to arrange for the paper’s distribution. As a result, the Sentinel, which was born on February 6, 1965, died on February 7.
OUR ACCOUNTANTS ADVISED US NOT TO
Companies in Washington, D.C., mailed, as usual, their quarterly tax payments that were due on September 30 to a special post office box, only to have their envelopes returned, stamped: “Box Closed for Nonpayment of Rent.” It seems that government officials had forgotten to pay the annual fee needed to keep the box open.
OH, YOU MEAN IN CASE OF AN EXPECTED EMERGENCY
It’s always important to be prepared for disaster, as the folks in Alma, Alabama, know all too well. In May 2008, when a ferocious storm hit the town, twenty
residents rushed to the community shelter which had just been built. Much to their dismay, however, the town leaders had forgotten to unlock it. The good folks of Alma were forced to sprawl on the ground behind the building as storm winds howled around them.
I KNEW THERE WAS SOMETHING VAGUELY FAMILIAR ABOUT ALL THAT BRILLIANT PROSE
When the absentminded Scottish writer John Campbell was in a bookstore one day, he became so engrossed in a book that it wasn’t until he bought it, took it home, and read it halfway through that he realized he had written it himself.
BUT IF I HAD COMMITTED A CRIME, I WOULD HAVE PUNISHED MYSELF
When former New York mayor David Dinkins was accused of failing to pay his taxes, he blamed his poor memory. He had merely forgotten to do it, he explained, which made his sin one of omission, not commission—and thus not worth bothering about. “I haven’t committed a crime,” he stated forcefully. “What I did was fail to comply with the law.”
THANKS, BUT I ALREADY HAVE A BOOKMARK JUST LIKE IT
When Albert Einstein received a $1,500 check from the Rockefeller Foundation as an honorarium, he used it as a bookmark for months, then lost the book. Trying to keep its records in order, the Foundation sent a duplicate check, and Einstein, having forgotten the first one, wrote back, “What’s this for?”
JUST DON’T LET HIM TOUCH THE GROUND
At one memorable meeting, the members of the Republican caucus of Grand Rapids, Michigan, forgot to bring the American flag for the obligatory—and we mean truly obligatory—Pledge of Allegiance. The members were stymied until party member Jack Pettit, who happened to be wearing a stars-and-stripes necktie, climbed onto a chair and remained motionless while everyone recited the words.