Forgetfulness… and Clumsiness in General.

I have reached the stage where my forgetfulness doesn’t surprise me anymore. On the contrary, I have come to accept it as a part of who I am and find it rather sweet. Less than a fortnight ago, I missed my stop as I was on the train home while looking through the photos in my phone to kill time. Too many times I didn’t show up for my shift at work, simply because I forgot. Then there was this one time that I showed up for my shift, when I didn’t have one. As I punched in my code and clocked in, my manager looked at me like I was a customer in a Barney suit, who  suddenly decided to play Minesweeper on the computer.

AND THEN there was this other time where I was scheduled to open the store, but forgot my keys and had to ring my manager on her day off to come to the store (during rush-hour, too) with her set of keys. Her motorbike broke down on the way and I ended up waiting in front of the store for two hours while Ikea and all the other stores opened, and by the time she got to the store, I was a teary-eyed mess, hating myself and wanting to jump off a cliff. But we went well over budget that day so it was all good. Needless to say, I busted my arse off, trying to up-sell everything and was extra EXTRA nice to all customers, who were potential victims of a sales scheme called rip-off.

Then there was a time when I left some books that I got out of the uni library on a public bus, only to realise that I had done so after the bus had gone. I had to wait until 9 or 10pm that day, when the bus terminated, to go to the bus depot in Kingsgrove (the final stop in the bus route) and collect it. Tired but relieved, I was just grateful that no one had taken it and that I didn’t have to pay for the replacements. Embarrassment didn’t exist in my vocabulary by then.

Then last year in Cambodia, when I was there on missions, I came back home one night after having dinner at the head missionary’s place and realised my phone was missing. I searched frantically for it, worrying that I had dropped it on the way home and will never be able to see it again. When I rang my phone, the missionary answered and asked, would I like my bag back? Only then did it hit me – I hadn’t JUST left my phone there, I had left my bag.

Oh, the HSC. It makes everyone lose their senses, but the effect was particularly strong on me. I remember having two exams that day – Japanese and Maths 2 unit. One subject that ten students take, and another subject that EVERYONE takes. (Every Asian, anyway, and I assure you, there was no shortage of us black-haired, yellow-skinned kids at our school). I arrived late to school, my face smothered in revision notes of every mathematical formula we have learnt in the past two years. I hurriedly set down my bag, grabbed my calculator and two Kilometrico pens, then tried to find my seat in the hall while trying to memorise the projectile formula that I never really understood. But something wasn’t right – there were far too little students in the hall;  only around fifteen. Bewildered, but holding my calculator tight against my chest, I somehow managed to find my seat. When I looked down, I saw the words ‘Japanese 2 Unit Beginners’ in big, fat, bold letters and thought to myself, ‘Ah, you’ve done it again’. Thankfully, I was well-prepared for my Japanese exam, and got a REALLY good mark for it. Can’t say the same for maths, though.

Other stuff, like realising I’ve left my wallet at home after walking to the station and having to come back home for it, or forgetting to bring my timetable at the beginning of the semester when it’s not yet embedded in my brain, or getting on the wrong train, thinking it’s the right one, has happened too many times to be awarded individual paragraphs. I have mentioned in the beginning of this post that I find my forgetfulness rather sweet – I have self-acceptance, now all I need is a guy who shares my opinion, and  is über-unforgetful, but not unforgiving.