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My Better Third


Mon May 28, 2001 - 2:43 PM EDT - By James Hromadka

A Memory Replacement

My Better Third

It finally happened. I had just parked my car on the street in downtown Houston and started walking towards Enron Field to enjoy an Astros game when it hit me -- I had no way to contact anyone should my car get towed/stolen because my Visor Prism had all my contact info on it. My wife and parents were out of town and I couldn't remember my friends' numbers, so I got the Visor out of my car and kept an eye on it the entire game. My Visor is officially a memory replacement for my brain.

When did this happen? I used to pride myself on remembering archaic phone numbers. I can still remember a friend's parents' old phone number but couldn't tell you his current one to save my life. In this age of speed dial and PDAs, phone numbers are now passe. No wonder much was made of the VisorPhone's speed dial capabilities -- no one can remember phone numbers anymore.

Multiple area codes, pagers, and cell phones haven't helped either. Now when my wife asks me to call someone, I say "let me get the Visor." Of course she doesn't need one -- she already remembers (verbatim it seems) every conversation we've had in the four years we've known each other. Maybe Handspring can ship a Visor with a built-in voice recorder so husbands like myself can have a defense against "don't you remember me telling you ...?"

I suppose I should be bothered by my newfound memory loss, but I'll paraphrase Albert Einstein here and say that my memory is best suited for other things besides ever-changing phone numbers. Heck, that was the reason I bought a PDA in the first place. I try to cram as many phone numbers, text files, and other important information into my Visor so I don't have to remember them, and that suits me just fine.So I'll accept that my wife Elexia is my better half and my Visor is my better third. That gives me a full one-sixth to myself, and that seems about right.

Is your Visor a stand-in for your memory? Discuss it here.