My memory isn’t what it used to be.
Well, maybe it is. How would I know?
Just this morning, after finishing the crossword puzzle, I flipped through the rest of the paper with the smug assurance that my mind is just as sharp as it’s ever been. Easy crosswords will do that to you.
And then I came across a photo of the Seven Dwarves.
I can’t tell you exactly why the daily paper found it important to show me their picture. I don’t remember why — no surprise there — but it suddenly became vitally important for me to recall all of their names.
It was pretty hard to tell one dwarf from another because they all had flowing white beards. Well, all but one of them — the little guy trailing along at the back of the line. I figured I should start with him.
He looked quite a bit younger than the others, and I seemed to remember that they called him by some sort of condescending name. The kind of name that makes high school miserable for some kids. Dorky? Doofus? Dingus? Something like that.
Jeez, this was going to be hard. If I couldn’t get the name of the most identifiable of the dwarves, I would feel pretty….
Dopey!
I was on a roll now!
The dwarf at the front of the line wore glasses, and he looked to be the leader. I seemed to recall that he ruled the other dwarves with a stern hand and was called…Doc. Or maybe it was Papa Doc. No, wait. Papa Doc was the iron-fisted dictator who ruled over the Smurfs. The head dwarf was just Doc.
Now we were getting someplace.
I stared at the rest of the dwarves, but their names wouldn’t come. Donder? Blitzen? Probably not.
Biden? Mitt? Those names rang somehow familiar in some recently cartoonish context, but hardly dwarf-like.
Gimli? Now that sounded like a proper dwarf name, but it didn’t seem to fit with the ones I already had. After all, other than Doc, I think the other six were all named after a malady or syndrome or something.
Pride? Avarice? Gluttony?
No, wait. Those were the Seven Deadly Sins, not the Seven Dwarves. Disney wouldn’t have entertained kids with any of those, would he?
Bipolar? Flatulent? Hyper-kinetic? Nope, those were my relatives, not the dwarves.
This was getting me nowhere. I studied the picture again.
One guy had a red nose. Sneezy! And then, for no reason at all, another name leaped into my head. Bashful!
My synapses were smoking now!
And then I hit the wall. Try as I might, no other names would come. I had nailed four of them, but the other three were a total mystery.
I thought it might help to put the dwarves out of my mind. Maybe I could sneak up on them while doing something else.
I opened the fridge. (Heinz? Wishbone? Ragu?)
I went to the bathroom. (Charmin? Old Spice? Suave?)
I puttered in the garage. (Craftsman? Lawn Boy? Krylon?)
Frustrated, I decided to take the easy way out. I fired up the computer and called on my good friend Google to help me out.
But before I could get all Googley with the three mystery dwarves, I had to check out that trending story about the guy who won a fishing tournament by breaking into an aquarium and stealing a big fish. Some other angler who was entered in the tournament had visited the aquarium with his kid the day before and he recognized the fish. (How do you recognize a fish, for heaven’s sake? Now that’s a guy with a memory!) He notified the authorities, and the bass-burglar was busted.
Fifteen Googley minutes later, I had printed out a great recipe for bread pudding, saw what my house looks like from space, and had gotten pretty good at dancing Gangnam style until I twisted my ankle.
I shut off the computer and hobbled back to the breakfast table, where I found the newspaper spread open.
Oh, right. The Seven Dwarves.
Dopey, Doc, Sneezy, Bashful and…
Nada. Zilch. Bupkus.
The heck with it, I thought. Who cares what those other three dwarves were called? The only person who ever needed to tell them apart was…what was that chick’s name again? Cinderella? Rapunzel? Hillary?
In the end, I decided that there was nothing wrong with my memory. Not really. Those three dwarves could stay forever anonymous as far as I was concerned. I didn’t need them to prove anything.
It didn’t matter that I couldn’t recall their names, because they weren’t relevant to my life. I was happy before this whole dwarf business, but now I was grumpy, and a little sleepy.
But my memory was just fine.
I turned to the crossword puzzle, but imagine my shock to see that some clown had already finished it!
Author, musician and storyteller TR Kerth is a retired teacher who has lived in Sun City Huntley since 2003. Contact him at trkerth@yahoo.com. Can’t wait for your next visit to Planet Kerth? Then get TR’s book, “Revenge of the Sardines,” available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and other online book distributors.
