Symptom of information overload

She's still a beautiful woman; when I interviewed her for my media-related day job quite a few years ago now, I remember getting the flutters most men get (but perhaps don't admit) when attempting to communicate with a woman who is "out of his league." I remember liking her personally and being a bit surprised about that, seeing as local TV anchorwomen I'd met previously seemed a bit overimpressed by themselves.

What I couldn't remember was her name, and so if the opportunity had arisen I wouldn't have been able to introduce her to my houseguests. Fortunately I don't think she saw us in the corner of the establishment. At least I hope not; I'd hate to think she thought I was being rude and aloof when I was just being embarrassingly forgetful.

About 10 minutes later, and after she'd left, her name did bubble to the surface of my brain, which created some relief. It was one of the worst cases of aging brain to afflict me in a long time. Or was it?

I don't watch local TV news very often, and it has been literally years since I saw her on television, and much longer since I saw her in person. Could it simply be that my brain filed her name in a dusty file of unneeded information, and it simply took longer to access it? I did, after all, eventually remember her name - and I recognized her immediately.

I'm going to choose to file this incident that way, rather than spend much time fretting that my brain is aging beyond control (since the aging process IS greatly out of my control) or that something worse than simple aging might be happening. Even the most sophisticated hard drive reaches a point where it has to be purged of files that it rarely, if ever, uses, and I have been trying to wedge a lot of information into my brain over the years.