Rather, I absentmindedly tossed them into the refrigerator with a bag of other things I had bought and fortunately retrieved them just before my highly sensitive aquarium fish could turn into lightly breaded dinner fish. At the outset, I should say that when it comes to incipient memory loss, I've got good reason to worry. Then there's genetics. While the members of my extended family often live deep into their 90s, by the time they hit their 70s, a lot of their cognitive lights have typically begun to flicker, and memory is the first bulb to blow. With the odds thus stacked against me, I couldn't help being concerned.
Bookstores bulge with memory-improvement guides.
The Web is awash in memory sites, and numerous hospitals and private therapists teach memory courses. To find out whether any of these work, I decided to spend a couple of weeks talking to the savants and sampling the cures. Total recall might be too much to ask, but total immersion was the only way to find out. Before setting out on my memory odyssey, I dialed up a few experts to learn how common memory complaints such as mine are and how serious they could become. On both counts, I came away reassured.