Here in the beginning of my silver-fox days (with what hair I've got left), I am beginning to encounter the routine bouts of momentary forgetfulness that are totally annoying, slightly disturbing but utterly normal for a person of my age. The fact of normality doesn't make me feel better, nor does it simplify my life. For instance:
I work out a couple times a week at a health club and I secure my gym bag and clothes in a locker, using a combination lock I've had for years. I can still remember the phone number at my student apartment in Madison back in 1972, and I have remembered this lock's combination for years. It's only six digits, after all. But I spent most of October fighting off some flu bug and didn't go to the club for about five weeks. Finally off my sick bed, I went to the club to rebuild my strength (which also takes more work, these days). Whoops, couldn't get that combo lock open. Well, it was always ornery if you didn't get the pointer exactly over that last number. What was that last number, anyway? Sixteen? Thirty-two? Uh-oh.
I spent the next week trying to remember the combination. I had it written down, of course, but also, of course, I couldn't recall where I'd hidden that information. By trial and error (because I had a rough idea what the numbers might be), I discovered the combination. Maybe took a hundred tries. In any event, I wrote down the combo and stored it as a computer file on a PC with a good search engine.
Bottom line: I once could remember that combo for months or years after last using it. Now I'm down to remembering it for only a few weeks without frequent use. That means that now, I would be wise to hide the combo in a traveling location (magic marker on my wrist? notebook entry on paper, stored in my glove compartment or shoe? still gotta work that out). Because you just never know. It's either that, bolt cutters, or strolling home in a towel.
The upside is that these days I know what's truly important, and the all-important issue in my life is time, as in remaining. So if I hadn't discovered that combo as fast as I did, I probably would have junked the lock and bought a new one. Wasteful! But, one has to move on. Contrast that to my college days:
My brother and roommate Larry came home one day with a Master Lock he'd found somewhere on campus. In those days, money was at least as important to us as time. Larry and my other roomie Ken had heard you could get the manufacturer to supply the combo by sending a letter with the lock's serial number, but for some reason (I've forgotten what!) that didn't work.
Nowadays, obtaining information on a forgotten lock combination is as simple as visiting the web, at least if yours is a Master Lock (this particular combo lock of mine isn't — there was a time when I was boycotting Master Lock, a local manufacturer, for outsourcing production overseas; the company has since returned some production to Milwaukee). Back in the pre-Internet 1970s, we had to be resourceful. Our solution: Turn the lock into a bathroom toy.
We hung it on a string within reach of the toilet, with a sign, a notebook and pencil, informing our many frequent guests that if they felt like amusing themselves while sitting there, they could test combinations at random. The notebook was for recording their attempts.
Of course we started with 0-0-0 (surely, an unlikely combination — how, for instance, could you follow the usual instruction to turn left two full turns past 0 and on to 0?) After that combo, next up was 0-0-1 and so on. I don't think we even got as far as 1-2-14, which range represents a huge number of permutations. Ah, but it was an amusing time killer, when we had time to kill.
Here's the thing, though. Aside from the fact our combo contest was a lark, and even though we knew the odds were daunting, we were optimistic we might find the magic number, because, hey: We were college students. We had all the time in the world.
