We recently had to get a new refrigerator. The old one was on its last legs, and fading fast. The freezer portion was keeping things refrigerated, and the fridge portion was keeping things at room temperature.
We had to clear out the freezer, which was an unsettling experience. Quite a lot of the food had to be thrown out, not because it had spoiled from heat, but it had spoiled from time. Many of the items were old enough that we couldn't remember buying them (at least one item came from a grocery store that got bought out and replaced several years ago). And going past the age, there was the quality of the items to consider: the bags of frozen vegetables with only 1/3 or 1/4 of a cup of vegetable matter left inside them (not worth the effort of trying to recover and cook them); the pieces of freezer-burned meat (dried up, inedible, age unknown); and, last but not least (disturbing), the bags of matter. I cannot go into much more detail than that; I'm sure that years ago, the matter in the bags was food, but they have since become completely unrecognizable lumps of matter (probably unsafe for human consumption).
It was a little frightening (and stomach-turning) to go through the freezer and see all these things. So many things got stuck in the freezer, were forgotten about, and got shoved towards the back. After that, nothing. They just stayed there for years. Over the years things accumulated, and in time they were pushed away to make room. It's not given much thought, so long as we can still cram a few more things in there.
How many other things have I accumulated, and forgotten?
A few days ago, I thought of a "Far Side" comic strip, and tried locating it so that I could read it again. My internet search proved fruitless, so I began looking through our "Far Side" books, in the hopes of finding and reading a hard copy version. After a while, I realized that I had forgotten what comic strip I was even looking for! This realization brought with it a mildly unnerving thought: I might have already read the comic I was looking for, and not even known I was reading it!
How many times have I passed by something I was interested in finding, because I forgot what it was I was looking for?
Something that happens with depressing frequency, is that I will go onto Youtube with the intention of watching a specific video, only to be distracted by some other video on the front page. I click on it, watch it, and then afterwards I realize I've forgotten what video I originally intended to watch!
How many times has something of interest escaped me because of a passing distraction?
What am I forgetting?
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