Total recall is hard to achieve

Every day at dawn I walk my dog Savannah, fully intending to bring along my phone, an old iPod mini, house keys, a small bat in case a large aggressive dog mistakes Savvy for a squirrel, and a tennis ball to toss for her in the dog park when our walk is over.

Every morning, I forget something.

The same thing happens when I head out on my bike for a late-afternoon ride along the Arkansas River Trail. More times than not, I neglect to bring the remote that opens my garage door. Since I don’t bring my house keys because I plan to re-enter the house via the garage, I’m locked out.

So I have to vault a fence and crawl in through the dog door. Sooner or later one of my neighbors will likely call the authorities to deal with what appears to be breaking and entering.

Others have more spectacular remembrance failures. A co-worker recently returned from a week in Paris and other destinations in France for which he brought enough clothing, accessories, and electronic gear to accommodate every possible situation.

He kept up with it all admirably, including the shenanigans of five fellow travelers, until the last leg of his return when he flew from DFW to Little Rock. That’s when he lost his passport. Replacement cost: nearly $300.

Another friend, along with her 16-year-old daughter, spent three glorious weeks in May and June touring Europe (mostly small towns in Greece, Italy, France, Germany, and England). She had the presence of mind to bring along dresses suitable for a formal dinner at one stop on their ambitious itinerary, and sent back beautiful photos of them on this unique adventure.

Then, in the last hours, somewhere on the way back from London to the U.S., she lost her phone. It never turned up. She had to replace it. Many of us know how much hassle that is, especially when jet-lagged. And, like the passport, not cheap—new iPhone SEs (the least expensive model) start at $429.

It’s one thing to forget to email obscure documents to participants before a work meeting.

That’s easily remedied. So why can’t we keep track of items we use every day?

If it makes you feel better, this is pretty common. According to The Wall Street Journal, the average person misplaces nine things a day and spends an average of 15 minutes every day looking for a lost item.

Forgetting for a moment why you went into a room, losing track of items (like your glasses or a dustpan, even though you have a broom in hand) or wandering around Target’s parking lot looking for your car are signs that your brain didn’t secure the details, likely because you were distracted, tired, busy, or stressed.

Here, courtesy of The Washington Post, is advice about how to overcome your tendency to misplace things:

■ When you put something somewhere, say its location out loud, says Mareen Dennis, an assistant professor of psychiatry at the University of Kentucky College of Medicine.

■ Take a picture of your parking lot spot, especially if you’re at an airport and won’t be returning to it for a few days, suggests Susan Whitbourne, a professor emerita of psychological and brain sciences at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.

■ Make your belongings stand out.

Dennis recommends. Attach your keys to a brightly colored key ring and select a similarly colored phone case, so that when you’re frantically scanning room after room, you’re looking for that color.

■ You can attach an Apple AirTag to objects you often misplace (I use Find My iPhone a lot).

■ Place a basket by an entrance where you drop keys and wallet upon entering, or designate one surface as the place you plug in your phone or tablet to charge it. Then, at the end of the day, scan the areas where you’ve been, find the items that are out of place, and return them to their home spots.

It’s not only objects that seem to disappear; everybody experiences the aggravation of not being able to remember something simple, like someone’s name, or that big city in British Columbia (it’s Vancouver; my brain kept coming up with Tecolote, a cafe in Santa Fe that I visited in 1993; it closed in 2019), or the singer of “The Warrior,” only to have it pop into our thoughts later — when it’s likely not needed.

(It was Patty Smyth of Scandal, who later married tennis star John McEnroe.)

“Memory slips like this are common,” says Dr. Glen Finney, a behavioral neurologist at Geisinger Health Center in central Pennsylvania. Called “blocking,” it might happen if a stronger memory gets in the way. “When this happens, try to relax. Then, usually, the memory will come back to you, he says. Usually.

Your memory is likely nothing to worry about if you can’t immediately recall facts over time, like how to do complex math (if you ever could), minor details, having inaccurate memories (like the name of your fourth-grade teacher), or part of a memory but not all of it.

Memories are subject to suggestibility, meaning that something you learn after creating a memory can change how you recall it. If this happens only once in a while, it’s not a cause for concern.

Crawling through the dog door? That could be.