You'd forget your head...

"You'd forget your head, if it wasn't screwed on tight".

This was a sentence I heard many times, as a child and then as a teenager. My band teacher was particularily fond of it. She also once said that forgetting something was actually a choice: you forgot something because, deep down, you wanted to.

This is not true.

For instance, I did not want to forget my son's swimming lessons last week. I didn't want to look up from my desk, where I was lesiurly preparing for the next day's lesson, and realize my little guy's swimming lesson started in 10 minutes. And I was 40 minutes from home. And it was half an hour long.

Poor guy didn't go swimming last week.

I also didn't want to forget my monthly staff meeting today. The same meeting that has been in my work calender and personal calender for a month. The same meeting I told my husband about on Monday when arranging for him to pick up the kids. The same meeting that is mandetory for all staff members in my small school. But I did. The meeting started at 4, in the meeting room.  I stayed at work, at my desk, until 4:30, when I took my coffee cup, walked PAST the meeting room to the strangely empty staff room, rinsed out my cup, and walked back to my classroom PAST the meeting room again. After a final tidy, I locked my door and left the school, 20 minutes before the hour-long meeting was over. 

I did not then want to arrive at the children's daycare and find them already picked up. I did not want to get home and have the husband ask, "Why are you here so early? Didn't you go to your staff meeting?" I did not want to explain to my admin. how I somehow managed to miss this regularly scheduled, mandatory, fairly important staff meeting - for no other reason than I simply, inexplicably forgot.

(Sigh). I suppose it is lucky my head is screwed on tight.