Out of Sight

I have this interesting thing that happens with my family.

Everyone who has known me for more than five minutes realises my brain works on the out-of-sight-out-of-mind principle. It's why I write messages on the back of my hands and on my mirror (and occasionally other surfaces). It's why I leave things where I'm likely to trip over them. If it isn't directly in front of me, I have great difficulty remembering it ever existed.

I suspect I was one of those kids who failed the Piagettian test with the ball long after they should have worked it out. You know the one: you show a kid a ball, and then roll it behind a couch. Does the kid go looking for the ball, or assume the ball is no longer there?

For many years my filing system consisted of leaving things were I was likely to see them. We will not go into my mother's tendency to move them and then deny ever seeing them. That's a different "thing".

No, my thing at the moment involves people moving things to places where I'll never see them, and still expecting me to remember that they exist.

"Let us shift the pot plants," they say, "to the side of the house where they will have a better ratio of shade to sun." That's okay, I'm fine with that, but for heavens sake don't turn around three weeks later and say "Sharon, why don't you ever water those pot plants?" When do I ever see them? I had originally put them somewhere visible, you have moved them somewhere invisible. The pot plants have ceased to exist.

Yes, in theory I know exactly where the pot plants are. However, without a reminder within visual range, that knowledge remains unaccessed by the active part of my brain.

These are things they know about me. So my only conclusion, regarding this behaviour of theirs, is that they are deliberately messing with my mind.

I don't think that's very nice.