There is a name for it
If you give me four random digits, say 3- 7 – 2 – 8, and ask me to spit them back at you, I haven’t got a prayer’s chance of getting them in the right order. If you call me and leave your phone number on my answering machine, it will take me 7 tries – one digit at a time – to get them all. It has been like this all my life – it is not creeping senility.
Now, I have a name for my condition: aural dyslexia. It doesn’t change a thing but it is nice to know. I am a bit like Tevye, in Fiddler on the Roof. You remember. He asks his wife of 25 years if she loves him and finally extracts the confession from her, “I suppose I do.” He also says that it doesn’t change a thing but it is nice to know.
Here’s Tevye, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h_y9F5St4j0
Very nice, Sid. I’ve seen “Fiddler” in many incarnations, including live with Topol in London in 1967. I get old, but it never does.
I attribute my diminishing ability to remember numbers to 1) speed dialing, and 2) a cluttered mind. My favorite sports quote is from Bob Lilly, the Cowboys’ Hall of Fame lineman. Once, when Staubach and the second-stringer were both hurt, Dallas used a very green rookie named Clint Longley. Longley lit up the air with several TD bombs to the Cowboys’ various great receivers. A sportswriter asked Lilly if Longley was the next great Dallas QB. Lilly said no. Asked to explain Longley’s great performance, Lilly said, “It was the triumph of an uncluttered mind.”
Glad you got your Google problem fixed.
If you want a great sports quote, try this one. Frank Szymanski played football for Notre Dame in the mid-1940s. One day he had to testify at a civil trial in South Bend. One of the attorneys wanted to establish Frank’s credentials as a witness. “Mr. Szymanski, how good a player were you?” Frank was taken back by the question and paused for a long time and finally blurted out, “I am the greatest football player in Notre Dame history.” Sitting in the courtroom was N.D. coach, Frank Leahy, who was stunned by the answer, knowing his player to be an unassuming man. After the trial, Leahy asked Szyymanski why he gave that answer, and it was this:
“Coach, it was embarrassing. At first, I did not know what to say but then I realized I was under oath.”
Sid, Sorry, but I’ve heard that one in various forms over the years, including one about penis size. There are always a lot of apocryphal stories making the rounds. Like the one told in every jurisdiction across the country, where the toughest judge on the bench (in Detroit, it was attributed to federal judge Thomas “Tiger” Thornton) is about to sentence a heinous recidivist bank robber who pistol-whipped a nun hostage and otherwise behaved very badly. The judge asks the miscreant if he has anything to say before sentence is passed. The guy says, “Yes, your honor. I’m fifty-seven and have diabetes and a heart condition. My mother is eighty-two, and it would kill her if I died in prison.” The judge nods thoughtfully and says, “Thirty to fifty.” The bank robber says, “Judge, didn’t you hear what I said. There’s no way I can do thirty to fifty.” The judge replies, “Just do the best you can.” I have had guys swear to me they were there when Thornton said it, even though I have heard the exact same story in California and New York.
Here’s another sports quote which, like the one about the uncluttered mind, applies to life in general. It’s from Mike Tyson: “Everybody has a plan until he gets hit.”
Apocryphally yours, Steve
The difference between my version and the various forms you heard, is that my version is for real. I read it in the old magazine, Sportsfolio, a forerunner to Sport and Sports Illustrated. I read it about one month after the incident allegedly occurred and I believe it.
P.S. The Thornton story is great.