When it comes to memory, it pays to have faith, particularly when packing the car for a road trip.
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Being accused of forgetting to pack something you're almost sure you did can generate all sorts of questions. Mainly along the lines of "where is it?" Which can be inconvenient if you can't locate it on request, 15 minutes into the journey.
Now it's hardly the wittiest of retorts, but accusing your accuser of actually forgetting to pack it can buy time and typically send both parties into vexed considerations about who's got early onset. But those consideration will only ever be relieved once the thing allegedly forgotten is found.
But that's not going to happen any time soon when you're driving down the coast having evacuated from a holiday house in quick time and the push is on to be somewhere else seven hours from now.
Otherwise, you'd turn back 15 minutes into that long return journey and have a look for the damn thing. But of course, that 15 minutes would probably compromise the train departure the uni students in the back seat are looking to connect with seven hours from now, because hey, there's always some imperative that makes the trip back just a little bit larger than what it has to be.
Lord knows it's not as simple as pulling over and checking the boot, because that thing is now dangerous, having been repacked, with explosive force, twice, after a late-breaking overnight bag had been added to the packing mix.
And maybe that's the distraction moment when you lost cognition of the black bag that holds the precious jacket and library book that you'd been asked to pack in the front seat and now looks like having been lost for all eternity. Because what chance the real estate agent being bothered to mail it down if we did indeed leave it on the front patio as we locked up the joint on departure.
That was the suspicion as we hit this memory showdown. Where's the bag? Is it really forgotten? And how long are we going to recriminate about stuff we can't prove, yet? Questions that can really set the tone on the road.
Credit to our players in this moment because both decided to say no more, without concrete proof, choosing instead to go to a dark place where they both brooded about the possibility of declining cognitive abilities, in each other. But how often does experience show that when things are lost, no amount of angst is going to make them found? Until they are. Best to bottle it up under on the old chestnut "it'll turn up", and hope it does.
Hardly a rock solid life philosophy for achieving goals, but one worth adopting when you're flogging down the Pacific Highway at 110kmh and there's not much else you can do or say that won't trigger another meltdown.
Sure enough, when we got back and deconstructed the amazing feng shui of the boot, the black bag was located, reminding us all yet again, that when it comes to remembering things forgotten, you've got to have faith. It was Easter after all.
