RIVER CITY JOURNAL: THIS COLUMN IS ABOUT SOMETHING, BUT I CAN'T REMEMBER WHAT

They say memory loss is part of old age. How do you explain not remembering anything since the eighth grade?

There are all kinds of formulas floating around. I know. I memorized a lot of them when I was in grade school. That was back in the Dark Ages when students were expected to know the answer to nine times eight, the capital of New Mexico (Alaska and Hawaii weren't states yet, so our job was 4 percent easier than it is today) and how to figure percentages.

As I recall, there were formulas for figuring the area of a circle and another one for the area of a rectangle. There was something else with a hypotenuse.

There were lots of other formulas, but that's about all I remember. I can't tell you the last time I needed to find the square root of anything.

This is not an argument in support of students today who say, "Why do I have to learn that? I'll never use it." We said the same thing in my day. And it's true. You'll never use it.

But there are good reasons to memorize multiplication tables, spelling lists, state capitals, a list of presidents in chronological order, the first six pages or so of "Hiawatha" and the year Missouri became a state.

For one thing, it trains your mind. I'm not exactly sure what it trains your mind to do, but successful people I know all say they had to memorize a lot of things when they were in school.

It occurs to me that most successful people who tell me they had to memorize things in school are about my age, which meant they went to school in an era when memorization was the backbone of a good education.

I suppose there are successful people in the world who don't know the capital of New Mexico, especially if they are Russians or Ethiopians or some such. I would imagine they had to memorize a different set of stuff and, as a result, became successful in their own countries.

Why am I bringing all this up now? Especially since I've already confessed (a popular national pastime, as it turns out) that I've forgotten a lot of what I memorized?

Yes, I don't know exactly what to do with a hypotenuse. But my brain has retained, for some unknown reason, large snatches of pretty much useless information. Like this:

"In Xanadu did Kubla Khan a stately pleasure dome decree ... ."

I think that's generally the start of a much longer poem by some well-known and important poet. What amazes me is that's just about how much I memorized all those years ago, and it's still there in my brain.

Or this:

Be, am, is, are, was, were, been.

Those are all the forms of the verb "to be."

I'm great when I watch "Jeopardy," which is a ritual at our house. We tape the afternoon program and watch it later that night. I get a lot of the questions right, especially the ones about Kansas, because not very many people know anything about Kansas. If I ever got on "Jeopardy" and all the categories were about Kansas or the forms of "to be," I'd clean up. No question about it.

Then why can't I remember meetings until they're just about over? Or lunches with people who actually expect me to show up? Or movies that I saw within the past six months?

Sure, some of you see this picture of a white-haired old man accompanying this column, and you think, "Geez, doesn't this guy know he's getting really old?"

I prefer to think that we age-advantaged folks have some purpose, and that's why our brains won't let go of bits of poetry -- who was that Xanadu guy anyway? -- but won't retain a simple three-item grocery list until we make it all the way to the store.

(By they way, I consider getting two out of three grocery items right to be successful remembering, so don't give me any guff about that.)

The other morning, every conversation I had included a complete memory lapse -- a person's name, a movie title, the big golf course in Monterey.

A couple of weeks ago during one of my early-morning jogging sessions, I couldn't remember the name of Sprigg Street. Honest.

So there I was, huffing and puffing and racking my brain, and all I could think of was "In Xanadu did ... ."

I kept saying to myself, I don't need poetry right now. What I'd really like to remember is how to get home.

So here's what I've decided: Young students should be required to memorize all the things I had to memorize when I was in school -- plus a lot of new things that we didn't even know about back then.

Why?

Because when these young pups get old and are out there on a cool autumn morning and can't remember where they are or where they're going, they won't even have odd bits of poetry or the date of Pearl Harbor to keep them company.

At least I've got that.

Dec. 7.

Right?

~R. Joe Sullivan is the editor of the Southeast Missourian.