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Last Modified 07/22/04

Mr. Biddle's, uh, I forget

By Richard W. Jennings
Kansas Senior Press Service

Mr. Biddle didn't go to medical school.

In fact, his college years were spent almost entirely in the study of obscure poets.  So when Mr. Biddle considered the physiology of his brain, he imagined a convoluted, spongy, eggplant-shaped object floating in a substance resembling extra-virgin olive oil, enclosed in a bony egg, with perhaps a stem, possibly as thick as a squash vine, keeping it attached.

Lately, he'd begun to suspect that the vine was unraveling. A number of things had slipped his mind, and Mr. Biddle, always a rather buttoned-down man, found this condition disturbing.

Putting the electronic key to his rusty blue car in the washing machine, for example.  It was a simple enough mistake, he supposed, forgetting to remove the key from his trousers pocket before tossing everything into the wash.  But when the repetitive thunk-thunk-thunk sound, like road gravel trapped in the dryer, caught his hard-of-hearing left ear, Mr. Biddle was extremely disappointed with himself.

Then there was the matter of the large purple bruise on his right leg.  How had this happened?  If he had accidentally run into a piece of furniture, or been struck by a meteorite, or been attacked by a bear, why couldn't he recall the incident?

Several times a day, Mr. Biddle would walk into a room and suddenly forget why he was there.  Later, after he'd left the room, he'd say to himself, "Oh, yes, I was looking for the egg timer."  Or possibly, "That's it!  I was going to make a list so I didn't forget to pick up a bag of socks and some fresh thyme at Wal-Mart - if Wal-Mart carries fresh thyme."

Inevitably these days, whenever Mr. Biddle made such a list, he left it behind.

"Dang!" he'd say out loud in the middle of the discount store.  "I know I needed something important.  What was it?"

On one occasion Mr. Biddle came home with a bright red fishing pole and a jar of Cajun olives just because he didn't want to leave the store empty-handed.

No one is more forgiving of one's frailties than one's dog, and Mr. Biddle's little bow-legged dog was no exception.  In fact, if Mr. Biddle's dog needed water, or wanted food, or simply wished to have his belly scratched, he would waddle over to Mr. Biddle and remind him with a single bark.

At least between these two, things had been worked out.

Sometimes Mr. Biddle forgot to take his medicine.  One day, all day long, he forgot what day it was.  Many times he forgot to go to the mailbox, or eat lunch, or return a telephone call to his bald-headed brother.

Hmmm, thought Mr. Biddle.  I wonder if I'm coming down with something.

At the supermarket one day, a woman stopped Mr. Biddle at the fresh produce display and proceeded to talk for a very long time.  Apparently she had worked with him many years before, but Mr. Biddle couldn't place her.  Had she been his boss?  His secretary?  The receptionist?  A co-worker on an important project?  Obviously, it was too late to find out now.  So Mr. Biddle merely nodded his head, muttering, "Yes, yes" a lot, while trying to examine from the corner of his eye the dried figs partially obscured behind her.

After she was gone, he thought to himself how old the woman looked.  Mr. Biddle could not recall knowing very many old women.

In Mr. Biddle's townhouse were a thousand books.  Over many years, Mr. Biddle had read nearly all of them.  But when he picked up one at random from the shelves and opened it to any page that happened to present itself, he could not recall anything about the characters, the plot, or the joy that book once had provided.

Yet Mr. Biddle remembered what it felt to be 11 years old.  He remembered sneaking down the stairs on Christmas morning, while everyone else was asleep, and seeing a mountain of presents underneath a real Christmas tree.  He remembered riding his Shetland pony in the wind, with his jacket wide open and his head high.  He remembered gathering duck eggs from the rock sat the edge of the lake.  He remembered sitting at the kitchen table with his mother while she cried about a little girl in the neighborhood who had died from a disease called polio.

Mr. Biddle remembered all sorts of things.  He just couldn't remember where he'd put his camera, or his cell phone, or the stamps he'd bought the day before at the post office.

Once, when Mr. Biddle was a boy, he went to see his grandmother in a nursing home.  Little Mr. Biddle understood very little about the journey called Life.  So, when his grandmother failed to recognize him, he raised his voice and called out, "Grandma, it's me, it's me!"

"Who?" his grandmother responded.  "Who are you?"

"It's me, Grandma," young Mr. Biddle shouted again.  "Your grandson, remember?  I lived in your house for awhile.  You used to bake me custard pies!"

"Who is it?," his grandmother shouted, shaking her arms with great anxiety.  "Who's there?"

After that, the nursing home attendants took his grandmother away and Mr. Biddle never saw her again.

Is this what is happening to me? Mr. Biddle wondered.

Days are long, and nights are even longer, but life itself is short.  Mr. Biddle knew this to be true.

"Even though, in the end, nothing much about what happens to us day-by-day really matters," he said to his little bow-legged dog, "While we're here, everything - every gesture, every thought, every impulse, ever action, every word of prayer - matters a lot."

That evening, when Mr. Biddle watched his cooking shows on TV, he held his little bow-legged dog in his lap.

"Pay close attention," Mr. Biddle advised him.  "The skills you learn here can be applied to a lifetime."

"Arf!" said Mr. Biddle's little bow-legged dog, happy to be included in the evening's entertainment.

"See?" Mr. Biddle said.   "That's why you want to boil your eggs gently.  It makes a big difference.  Don't ever forget."

When the sun at last had gone down, Mr. Biddle and his little bow-legged dog sat together on the front steps. The evening sky was clear.  The stars were twinkle lights.  Once in awhile a leaf would skitter down the street, caught in a sudden breeze.

A neighbor with a little gray schnauzer passed by.  Mr. Biddle's little bow-legged dog barked happily, then leapt from Mr. Biddle's lap and ran over to nuzzle noses with the schnauzer.  Soon the two dogs were tumbling in the grass and sniffing each other's private parts.

"I'm so sorry," Mr. Biddle apologized to his neighbor.  "He's getting old.  Sometimes, he forgets his manners."

"Oh, that's all right," the schnauzer's owner replied.  "My dog is getting up in years, too.  I'm just grateful that he can still remember what it's like to be a puppy."

"Yes," Mr. Biddle said, nodding his head.  "That's certainly something to be grateful for."

(c) Richard W. Jennings.  All flights reserved.  Richard Jennings retired from the field of advertising to become a fiction writer.  He lives in Overland Park.