If memory serves me...
Well, that's the problem these days, it doesn't. At least related to frisbee. As I age not quite so gracefully, I find that it is becoming more and more difficult to remember things. Let me digress...
I remember when I was a young pup in college, and the Earth Atomizer years post college. Throw in a bunch of summer leagues, including Westchester summer league, Boston Corporate League. Hell, even the first few years of DoG. So we're talking 1984-roughly 1995-6. I used to remember every pass I threw, caught, most passes other people threw, what happened on defense, what we played on defense, my stats in general. We took statistics on Earth Atomizer for a few years (that's a whole other discussion), which also helped refine my memories at the time, and gave me additional incentive to make sure I didn't get screwed.
But you could wax rhapsodic after a weekend was over about the minutia of every single game, your best throws, what you were wearing. In particular, you could remember every single detail of your turnovers, who to blame, why this guy didn't cut right, how if the receiver didn't suck or slow down they wouldn't have gotten d'ed, why couldn't they read the disc.
Now I'm lucky if I remember what happened during the day that very same night. For instance, this year at Nationals, I played 7 games in 4 days. I had 3 turnovers for the entire weekend. At this point (and last week when I was reminiscing with Jim), I can only remember 2 of them. The laughable long forehand attempt to Forch (and I don't even remember which game that was in), and a backhand upwind up the line to the Englishman that apparently he wasn't open on. This was against Sockeye, and I think it was the semis, although I'm not even certain of that anymore. Scary, eh?
This isn't really trolling for comments/hits, but I'm curious to see if any of the other old-timers out there, and perhaps the not quite so old, but not quite so young timers are also experiencing the same thing?
I remember when I was a young pup in college, and the Earth Atomizer years post college. Throw in a bunch of summer leagues, including Westchester summer league, Boston Corporate League. Hell, even the first few years of DoG. So we're talking 1984-roughly 1995-6. I used to remember every pass I threw, caught, most passes other people threw, what happened on defense, what we played on defense, my stats in general. We took statistics on Earth Atomizer for a few years (that's a whole other discussion), which also helped refine my memories at the time, and gave me additional incentive to make sure I didn't get screwed.
But you could wax rhapsodic after a weekend was over about the minutia of every single game, your best throws, what you were wearing. In particular, you could remember every single detail of your turnovers, who to blame, why this guy didn't cut right, how if the receiver didn't suck or slow down they wouldn't have gotten d'ed, why couldn't they read the disc.
Now I'm lucky if I remember what happened during the day that very same night. For instance, this year at Nationals, I played 7 games in 4 days. I had 3 turnovers for the entire weekend. At this point (and last week when I was reminiscing with Jim), I can only remember 2 of them. The laughable long forehand attempt to Forch (and I don't even remember which game that was in), and a backhand upwind up the line to the Englishman that apparently he wasn't open on. This was against Sockeye, and I think it was the semis, although I'm not even certain of that anymore. Scary, eh?
This isn't really trolling for comments/hits, but I'm curious to see if any of the other old-timers out there, and perhaps the not quite so old, but not quite so young timers are also experiencing the same thing?
posted by Alex de Frondeville at 8:08 PM
11 Comments:
Ah, damn it. That's right. A drop when he flailed on the blady pull, I had to chase him to the back of the endzone and he threw me a pretty fast backhand which rose a little as I heard footsteps. Yeah, my turnover, but I was still pretty annoyed at him. So Ariel, do you find that you remember pretty much everything in all the games right now, being a young'un?
My Total Ultimate Recall isn't as good as it used to be, either. I'm not sure it's been age as much as distraction. For the last couple years, I've been involved in leadership/subbing roles. Though I don't think it has made me play worse, it has definitely reduced my time to dwell on my own play.
way to bail yourself out before you were relegated to the aj heap of blogs...
tell us how your kids ate your copy of Aladdin, and you were stuck having to watch Little Mermaid 3 times last week...
now THAT's a horror story...
your dementia? that's not NEWS!...
I do like that you forgot the drop (description of which I immediately remembered vividly)...
I'm an old-timer and have lousy recall for details of the past. I know people that can recall all these details about past tournaments and I'm always fascinated by that. Talk to Jeff Landesman and he can tell you everything about Nationals in '88. I can barely remember being there. I don't mind forgetting the bad games, but I wouldn't mind remembering some of the good ones. I guess at this point it doesn't matter cause I change all my stories of the old days to make me sound good. As John McEnroe says "the older I get the better I was".
Perhaps it's just maturation combined with a realization that the official turnover committer is often just the last guy in a chain of mistakes. Take your forgotten turnover, for instance. First off, the team let them score upwind so that they're pulling downwind, then Lyn does a crappy job of fielding the pull and bounces one off your forehead, but you're the only one debited in the stat book.
On an unrelated note, few people realize that the word for Word Verification is actually randomly selected from an Eastern European phone book.
This is definitely not just a function of not remembering turnovers. I used to remember 3/4 of ALL the passes I made, and every single goal, turnover, goal caught, etc. I was using the turnovers as an example, but I also barely remember other highlights like goals thrown (and caught, yes there were a few) in any game other than the two sockeye games and bravo. And even then I had to slowly reconstruct those in consultation with other players.
That's a good point. It is being able to forget that allows the D squad to keep going out there point after point, get scored on, and not get frustrated... and I'm not specifically referring to our team.
Ariel, I suspect that these memories will fade as you age, so that you will not only forget the recent stuff, but the stuff that you remember so vividly now will fade also. You'll still remember big plays, but all the ancillary stuff will fall by the wayside. Just my prediction.
I can't BELIEVE I am actually going to start posting to these discussions, but apparently, I have sunk this far.
In answer to the simple question, "Is Alex going senile faster than the rest of us?" the answer is, probably not. I also have trouble remembering details of a tournament as soon as I belly up to the bar at Mr. Big's. On the other hand, if I find that I can't quite remember exactly how I managed to turn over yet another critical possession, I can always ask Worm. He manages to recall every detail still.
I rationalize this by thinking, "I have more important things to remember these days. Like where I put my Geritol."
BILLY! Welcome! Mmmmmm. Mr. Bigs... I hear Worm even remembers turnovers for you when you're playing on different teams. That man has quite a network of spies.
Fortunately you weren't playing open this year at Nationals, otherwise that would be another one of the few people playing elite that was older than I (stupid Jim). Woo-hoo! And yes, I think the grammar there was a little tortuous, but better to comment like this than to try and rewrite it to correct it.
And BTW, sweet blog name, ultimatebackintheday.blogspot.com. Now all you have to do is to actually remember some details from the time when the mighty allosaurus roamed the earth and post it.
Alex, Just remember as you grow older. Growing old is mandatory, growing up is optional :-) dp
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