1,000 Unforgettable Senior Moments

by Tom Friedman

  NEXT STOP: AMNESIAVILLE

  Traveling by train to attend a ceremony, the bishop of Exeter, William Cecil, couldn’t find his ticket. “It’s all right, my lord,” said the sympathetic collector. “We know who you are.” “That’s all very well,” replied the bishop, “but without my ticket, how am I to know where I’m going?”

  THE PONY EXPRESS IS LOOKING BETTER AND BETTER ALL THE TIME

  The United States’s first airmail flight was scheduled to take off from Potomac Park in Washington, D.C., at 11:30 a.m. on May 15, 1918. You could feel the excitement: A large, expectant crowd had gathered, and even President Wilson was on hand. But the engine of the Curtiss Jenny airplane just wouldn’t start. A squad of mechanics checked everything they could think of, but thirty minutes passed without success. The president was far from pleased—and he was even less pleased when a mechanic finally thought to check the fuel tank, which was empty.

  THANK GOD WE FOUND A GAS STATION THAT WAS OPEN

  When two robbers knocked off a gas station in Vancouver, Canada, they locked the attendant in the bathroom and drove off with $100. After driving around for a while, they realized they were lost and pulled back into the same station to ask for directions, failing to recognize either it or the attendant, who had just escaped from the bathroom. As they left the station for the second time, the attendant called the police. Amazingly, the clueless thieves then returned for a third time—now on foot. Their car had broken down a short distance away, they said, and they needed a tow.

  HOW SOON THEY FORGET

  When The History Channel in Great Britain conducted a poll asking viewers to rank the most important events in 20th-century British history, they must have forgotten quite a few. Topping the list, and ranking above the First World War, the Great Depression, the Second World War, and the end of the Cold War, was the death of Princess Diana back in 1997.

  ANOTHER ROUND OF GROG, MATEY, AND WE MIGHT GET A STANDING OVATION

  Actor Alan Devlin was known for his habit of leaving the stage in a fit of pique in mid-performance. Once, while appearing in H.M.S. Pinafore at the Dublin Gaiety Theatre, he looked out at the audience and shouted, “I’m going home! Finish it yourself!” But first he took a detour. He went to Neary’s bar in his admiral’s costume and ordered a round of drinks. But Devlin had forgotten to take off his radio mike, which was still turned on, so the sounds of alcohol-fueled conversation and clinking glasses filled the theater as the dumbfounded cast and audience listened in.

  NAME ANOTHER PARTY

  Before winning a senate seat in North Carolina, future vice presidential candidate John Edwards showed little interest in politics and often forgot to vote. He was once asked whether he had started his political life by registering as a Democrat or Republican. He couldn’t remember.

  I’VE JUST HAD THE MOST WONDERFUL CONVERSATION WITH 894-606-5789

  The brilliant Hungarian mathematician Paul Erdös had the habit of phoning colleagues around the world at all times of the day. Although he could remember the phone number of every mathematician he knew, he frequently couldn’t recall their first names, so he didn’t use them in conversation—except for that of one colleague, Tom Trotter, whom he called Bill.

  ON THE OTHER HAND, I CAN HEAR A GUN COCKING 26 MILES AWAY

  President Ulysses S. Grant had no ear for music, and no memory for it, either. When he was asked one evening if he had enjoyed a concert, he replied, “How could I? I know only two tunes. One of them is ‘Yankee Doodle’ and the other one isn’t.”

  THOU SHALT REMEMBER!

  Bill Harbach, one of the first executive producers of The Tonight Show, once attempted to ask his secretary to telephone future guest Charlton Heston to arrange a rehearsal. “Get me . . . uh . . . Charleston Huston!” Harbach barked. “Wait—I, uh, mean Charlton Hudson!” Suddenly recalling that the actor had starred as Moses in the movie The Ten Commandments, he corrected himself. “You know who I mean!” he told his secretary. “Chester Moses.”

  YOU THINK THIS IS BAD? YOU SHOULD SEE WHAT I’M LIKE WITH PARISHIONERS!

  The 18th-century English vicar George Harvest was frequently forced to borrow a horse when he traveled because he had forgotten where he left his own. Eventually, people stopped lending him theirs because he mislaid those, too. When he did have his animal with him, he would dismount when he arrived at his destination and lead it away. But if the horse shook off the bridle or a stable boy removed it, the oblivious parson would continue to walk, holding the reins as if the horse were still attached.

  WHAT ABOUT THE PAINTING OF THAT WOMAN WITH THE ENIGMATIC SMILE? DON’T TELL ME I OWN THAT ONE, TOO!

  Eccentric publishing magnate William Randolph Hearst (1863–1951) was famous for his fanatical pursuit of art, which Orson Welles satirized in his film Citizen Kane. Once, Hearst sent an assistant to scour Europe for a masterpiece he was determined to add to his collection. Several months later, after he had looked everywhere, the man reported back that he’d finally located the item, and it would cost Hearst nothing! Why? Because the publisher had already bought it years before, stored it in a warehouse overseas, and then, as he had done with so many other things, forgotten all about it.

  NOW, DON’T YOU FEEL BETTER?

  Tatiana Cooley, the winner of several national memory contests, could remember a list of 3,125 words, 100 names and faces, 1,000 numbers, a 54-line poem, and the precise order of a shuffled deck of cards. But when it came to everyday life, she was notoriously absentminded and a chronic user of Post-it notes and lists.

  AH, AND THAT WOULD EXPLAIN WHY YOU’RE WEARING THE MORE EXPENSIVE SUIT

  Maxwell Perkins (1884–1947), the influential editor of F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, and Thomas Wolfe, was talking to a young writer one day when a distinguished-looking man entered Perkins’s office at Charles Scribner’s Sons, the New York publishing house. Perkins looked up at the man with no sign of recognition. Finally, the visitor could stand it no longer. “I’m Charles Scribner,” Perkins’s employer snapped.

  AND MY NAME IS . . . SEÑOR MOMENTO!

  For a performance of Puccini’s opera Turandot, the Rome Opera designed a set with a little stream and a small Chinese bridge that crossed over it. On one side of the stream was Carlos Gasparini, the tenor playing Prince Calaf, and on the other side, the soprano who played Princess Turandot. When she cried “Mio nome è Amore!” (“My name is love!”), he was supposed to run across the bridge and embrace her, but he forgot and tried to leap across the stream instead, tripped, and fell in.

  YOU REALLY GOT ME SO I DON’T KNOW WHAT I’M DOING

  When rock star Ray Davies of the Kinks took his driving test in the 1960s, he forgot to look where he was going and knocked down a woman carrying groceries. He jumped out of the car to help her, but forgot to put on the parking brake, forcing the driving instructor to stop the moving car before it could do any more damage. “I was only learning to drive because I thought I should be a regular person,” Davies said. “But that was stupid.”

  NO GENDER BIAS HERE

  Ronald Reagan was famous for verbal senior moments years before his memory failed him completely. When he was hosting a White House state dinner for Prince Charles and Princess Diana, for instance, he stood up, glass in hand, and declared, “Here’s a toast to Prince Charles and his lovely lady, Princess David!” It was then that actor Peter Ustinov was heard whispering to another guest, “He must be thinking about next weekend at Camp Diana.”

  TOTALLY WINGING IT

  The Irish-born American stage actress Ada Rehan once played a heroine in a romantic comedy opposite a nervous young actor. During one scene she asked him a question that was crucial to the plot and then paused to wait for his answer. But the actor had forgotten his line, which was, literally, “You don’t reply.” Someone in the wings frantically prompted him: “You don’t reply . . . You don�
�t reply.” The young man, who was at his wit’s end, thought it was a critique of his performance. He exclaimed with great irritation, “Well, how the hell can I reply, when I don’t know what to say?”

  AND HE’S ALSO BEEN DEAD FOR CENTURIES

  After Daniel Webster’s death, Congressman Jerry Simpson of Kansas eulogized the great Massachusetts senator, orator, and lawyer. However, at one point he confused Daniel with Noah Webster (no relation) and praised the latter’s dictionary, the first one written and published by an American. A congressman next to him whispered, “Noah made the dictionary,” to which Simpson, his mind plunging deeper into his senior moment, whispered back, “Noah built the Ark!”

  WE TRIED TO GET THE PRESIDENT, BUT HE WAS BUSY

  New York congressman Clarence E. Hancock was one of several speakers at a meeting of a women’s club in his district. Hancock, who served in the House for twenty years, was introduced by the club’s chairwoman: “Members, this is our last meeting of the year,” she began, “and we have enjoyed a splendid program. Our speakers have been both entertaining and instructive. But today we have something quite different. I present Congressman Hancock.”

  THE FIRST VIRTUE IS NOT BEING ABLE TO REMEMBER VIRTUES

  On his eightieth birthday, writer Somerset Maugham spoke at a dinner held in his honor in London. “There are many virtues in growing old,” he began, but then stopped and stared down at the table. The pause grew into a long, awkward silence. Maugham looked absently around the room, shifting from foot to foot, glancing helplessly at his notes. Finally, he cleared his throat and explained, “I’m just trying to think what they are.”

  WHAT A COINCIDENCE! IT HAS THE SAME NAME AS I DO!

  While working with certain equations, the great mathematician David Hilbert suggested a revolutionary idea that led to the development of a new kind of geometry. It involved multidimensional spaces that came to be known as “Hilbert spaces.” Some time later, Hilbert attended a conference with fellow mathematician Richard Courant. Several papers presented there referred to this or that Hilbert space. After one such presentation, a genuinely puzzled Hilbert turned to his colleague and asked, “Richard, exactly what is a Hilbert space?”

  HONEY, I’M STILL HAPPY TO GIVE YOU MY AUTOGRAPH

  Doris Day was walking down a Beverly Hills street one day when a man stopped her. Assuming he was a fan, Day said hello and started to move on. “Don’t you remember me?” the man called after her. “No,” the actress replied. “Should I?” “Well, you didn’t have that many husbands,” replied her second husband, saxophonist George Weidler.

  WHEN CUSTOMERS REALLY CLEANED UP

  In 1992, as a promotional gimmick, the British division of the Hoover vacuum cleaner company offered two free, round-trip airline tickets from London to other European cities. All you had to do in order to qualify was buy $150 worth of Hoover products. If you bought $375 worth, you got two free round-trip tickets to New York or Orlando. Apparently people at the company had forgotten to do the math. More than 20,000 customers got free tickets before Hoover ended the promotional campaign, having lost $50 million.

  HINDI, ON THE OTHER HAND, WOULD HAVE BEEN A BREEZE

  Mark Boyle decided he would walk from Bristol, England, to Mahatma Gandhi’s birthplace in western India without carrying any money—to demonstrate the importance of humility and the superficiality of wealth. He figured it would take him two-and-a-half years to reach India, starting with a trek to the English coast and a ferry to Calais, France, in early 2008. But Calais was as far as he got. He explained later that it was just too hard to communicate. It seems he didn’t remember that the French spoke a foreign language—namely, French—which he did not.

  SPACE, THE FINAL FRONTIER OF MEMORY LAPSES—MISSION 2

  On July 22, 1962, the Mariner 1 space probe was launched from Cape Canaveral. Its scientific mission: to reach Venus after 100 days in space, go into orbit, and then send back valuable data. But four minutes after the launch, the $18 million rocket veered dangerously off course and had to be destroyed by remote control. The cause? Someone had forgotten to put one symbol into the computer’s program.

  CAUTION: THIS ICE MAY BE COLD

  The business world must have a pretty good idea of just how absentminded some people can be if the explicit warnings they put on packages are any indication. For example, on a package of Hormel pepperoni, there’s “Do not eat packet,” and for a Rowenta iron, there’s “Do not iron clothes on body.” And then there are these other classics: “Do not take if allergic to Zantac” on a box of Zantac 75, and “Do not drive a car or operate machinery,” a warning to all those forgetful kids taking Boots Children’s cough medicine.

  UNTIL TOTAL AMNESIA DO US PART

  In 1920 Albert Muldoon agreed to be the best man for his friend Christopher at a marriage ceremony in Kileter, a village in Northern Ireland. But having forgotten where to stand during the ceremony, he wound up on the wrong side of the groom. The priest, never having laid eyes on the happy couple, addressed Muldoon during the service instead of Christopher. Muldoon, by now thoroughly muddled, dutifully answered the priest’s questions while Christopher suffered his own senior moment, having forgotten how the ceremony was supposed to go. It was only when Muldoon was poised to sign his name in the registry under the heading of “Groom” that the bride realized she was about to marry the wrong man.

  SAY YOU’LL CALL BACK—WE’RE IN THE MIDDLE OF A PLAY

  Actor A. E. Matthews’s memory deserted him at the most inopportune times. Matthews once appeared in a play involving a telephone call that was critical to the plot—a call that Matthews was supposed to answer. But when the phone rang on cue and Matthews picked up the receiver, his mind went blank. Desperate, he turned to the other actor on stage and said, “It’s for you.”

  MAYBE WE CAN SELL IT AS A VERY LARGE BATH TOY

  As the old proverb says, measure twice and cut once—or in other words, make sure your measurements are correct if you don’t want to waste time, material, and money. The producers of the film Raise the Titanic either never learned the adage or forgot it completely. They built an exact scale fifty-five-foot model of the doomed ship for $350,000 (for a few special effects shots), but they didn’t bother to check if the model would fit into the studio’s water tank. So they were forced to build a larger tank at the cost of $6 million, which was only $1 million less than the entire gross of the doomed film.

  AND TO THINK I’M STILL GOING TO THE HALL OF FAME

  In the early 1900s, pitcher Rube Waddell of the Philadelphia Athletics, perhaps the most eccentric baseball player in history, often wandered off between innings when he was supposed to be in the dugout. Once, after a frantic search, teammates found him shooting marbles with some local kids behind the ballpark; another time, he left to chase a fire truck. He sometimes arrived just a few minutes before game time, made his way through the stands, and jumped onto the field, tearing off his clothes as he approached the clubhouse to change into his uniform.

  GET SHAKESPEARE—WE NEED A REWRITE!

  For a Columbia Pictures film about big business, a screenwriter needed an important speech for the CEO to deliver to his board of directors. So he picked one that Spartacus, the Roman slave turned rebel leader, had made to his followers. “What the hell is this?” said Columbia head Harry Cohen when he read the script. The screenwriter explained where the speech came from, but Cohen wasn’t buying it. “I don’t want any of that crap,” he said impatiently. “I want a speech that everyone in the audience will recognize immediately.” “You mean like Hamlet’s soliloquy?” asked the screenwriter. “No! No!” yelled Cohen, who was known for his terrible temper and his equally bad memory. “I mean something like ‘To be or not to be!’ ”

  I BET WILSON WOULD HAVE REMEMBERED

  President William Howard Taft had an inconvenient problem for a politician: He couldn’t remember names—not even th
e names of his staunchest supporters. At one rally, when Taft was running for re-election against Woodrow Wilson, he confessed to a big contributor, “My advisers tell me I ought to remember you, but bless my soul, I cannot recall you at all!” (Needless to say, the contributor contributed nothing after that.)

  INDELIBLY YOURS

  James J. Sylvester, a professor at Johns Hopkins University in the 19th century, was notoriously absentminded. One afternoon, just as one of his students was going out for a walk, Sylvester handed him an ink bottle and asked him to drop it in the letterbox, since he was very anxious to have an immediate reply.

  AND, FURTHERMORE, ONCE YOU TELL ME, I’LL DISAGREE WITH YOU EVEN MORE!

  The 19th-century English novelist Anthony Trollope worked for the post office most of his life. It was his habit of waking very early and writing at great speed before leaving for the office that may have brought on this senior moment: At a staff meeting one day, Trollope snapped at a colleague who had spoken before him, “I disagree with you entirely! What was it you said?”

  EXCEPT FOR THAT, I THINK WE’RE IN PRETTY GOOD SHAPE

  In Cuba during the Spanish-American War, U.S. soldiers charging up San Juan Hill were quickly confronted with barbed wire, a typical first line of defense. Unfortunately, no one had remembered to bring wire cutters. Artillery support, which is also a given in an infantry assault, had been forgotten as well.