I can remember our phone number when I was four years old (not that impressive, as it was only four digits back then) but not where I left my cellphone. Nor how to switch it on sometimes.

I had a super stressful day 2 years ago, on my way home I couldn't remember either of my PINs. Drove down the road about 5 miles, and suddenly thought I remembered both and wrote them down. Woke up in the middle of the night realising the numbers I wrote down were from card I had 15 years ago. Being dyslexic, I commit things to memory, I can still recall customer account numbers and phone numbers from over 40 years ago, hundreds of them. But, where did I put my glasses?

Join the club. I remember my gym locker combination from 45 years ago..14-35-9,,,but have to concentrate really hard to remember my cell phone #.

Then I guess you have a good long term memory like me but bad short term memory. We're in the same boat.

Car registrations for me. I can remember the number plates for every single car I've ever owned, along with several of my parents'. It serves no useful purpose.

The theory behind 'going into a room and forgetting what you went in for' is to do with the way your brain 'files' different situations. When you pass through a doorway, you close the thought process belonging to the room that you left and reopen the one for the one you're entering (assuming you've been in there recently.) Unless you make a point of remembering the details that you need, you tend to leave them inside the thought process for the other room. Walk back into the other room, and you instantly remember what it was that you wanted. You then make a conscious effort to retain those thoughts going into the other room, and that way, you get to carry them from one thought process to another.

Out of practice we all had to practice by remembering numbers but now our phones do everything

I blame children, but that may just be me...

I was really proud of myself the other day when I went into a room and remembered exactly why I went there. To be fair, it was the bathroom. But still.

I'm really happy that this is the response that will bump me to level 5. Small joys.

Welcome to the club.

It's utterly maddening! If you find a cure, could you let me in on it, please?

Forgetfulness
Billy Collins

The name of the author is the first to go
followed obediently by the title, the plot,
the heartbreaking conclusion, the entire novel
which suddenly becomes one you have never read,
never even heard of,

as if, one by one, the memories you used to harbor
decided to retire to the southern hemisphere of the brain,
to a little fishing village where there are no phones.

Long ago you kissed the names of the nine Muses goodbye
and watched the quadratic equation pack its bag,
and even now as you memorize the order of the planets,

something else is slipping away, a state flower perhaps,
the address of an uncle, the capital of Paraguay.

Whatever it is you are struggling to remember
it is not poised on the tip of your tongue,
not even lurking in some obscure corner of your spleen.

It has floated away down a dark mythological river
whose name begins with an L as far as you can recall,
well on your own way to oblivion where you will join those
who have even forgotten how to swim and how to ride a bicycle.

No wonder you rise in the middle of the night
to look up the date of a famous battle in a book on war.
No wonder the moon in the window seems to have drifted
out of a love poem that you used to know by heart.

“Forgetfulness” from Questions About Angels, by Billy Collins, © 1999.

Hahaha! So true! I scare myself and panic thinking Alzheimer's!