Just Tango On

How to Forget Anything (Without Drugs or Alcohol)

–by Le Béret, Guest Contributor

DO go to high school and college reunions. You’ve forgotten everyone anyway and together you can manufacture a new history, when everyone was happy, sexy, could stay up for days, engage in brilliant debate, and have the choice of any career or spouse in the world. Regret earns you bonus miles.

DO only eat eggs. No one remembers eggs.

DO hold grudges. Don’t forgive anyone and soon you’ll have no one left to remember, or to remember you.

DO go back to a city in which you once lived. Walk the streets and see how shops have closed, restaurants have changed hands, condo projects built.  Mourn either the seedy decay or the cute gentrification.  Go to places where dead or relocated relatives lived.  Rinse and repeat.

DO NOT delete important computer files. Keep working and the files will do that on their own.  Just like your brain.

DO NOT bother to pay your income taxes or keep any receipts. That’s why they employ the good people at the I.R.S.: to help remember things for you.

DO hang around much younger people. They won’t give a damn about what you remember and laugh at you for thinking they do.

DO listen to the elderly. They are skilled at losing important recent memories and fictionalizing your shared distant past.  The elderly should be sought for their wise counsel and you should heed their advice.  By doing so, you will choose a safe future, one in which you try nothing and don’t go anywhere.  This helps keep you from creating new memories.