Memory Loss, The New Battlefront

Amid the fog of life that keeps me too long away from this blog, comes David Brooks to shine his lamp into one of the darker recesses of modern life. To wit, he portrays the gap between those with seemingly endless banks of memory cells and the rest of us. Check it out for a good laugh. Here is a sample of Brooks' tone as he describes an encounter with a person of superior memory:

Your only strategy is evasive vagueness, conversational rope-a-dope until you can figure out who this person is. You start talking in the tone of over-generalized blandness that suggests you have recently emerged from a coma.

Sensing your pain, your enemy pours it on mercilessly. “And how is Mary, and little Steven and Rob?” People who needlessly display their knowledge of your kids’ names are the lowest scum of the earth.