It is such a pervasive thing in my brain that I get sidetracked easily. Sometimes concentration is interrupted for a split second while a memory flits through. I can lose the thread of a conversation by these flits.
Talking with someone else who has traveled the United States, their experiences touch off a flurry of flits in my brain. I've been there, I saw that, on a related note let me tell you what I experienced. The conversation zooms from one place to another and topics change so fast. Leaving the person I just conversed with I will have had a pleasant conversation with them and hope to do so again, or I will feel a dislike for the person and don't want to see them again.
What is it about memory that connects us with other people? It happens everywhere around us with all peoples. You ask anyone where they were on 9/11 and the memory of that day will come back to them. We will feel the same emotions we felt at the time, we will hear the sounds around us, the smells will even be there.
A football game, a child's swim meet the parent attended, a baseball game, a golf tournament, the company picnic, a Christmas party, a baby's Christening, the birth of a child, the death of a loved one. These potent times in our lives have lasting memories that have a way of taking you back to where you were on that day.
The title of my blog "What Day Is It? Where Was I Yesterday?" is not so much about a failing memory as one of business in an unstructured life. By unstructured I mean this is not a job of Monday through Friday and 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. with the weekends off. This job, while we are working, is one day after another. No weekends off, get up early in the morning and keep going until it gets dark. Days run into each other so much that I lose track of what day it is. I often get a day ahead of myself - think it is Saturday when it is Friday. It is so bad I have to wear a watch with the days of the week on it so I know what day it is.
I have wondered if I have a dis-associative disorder, or an ADD like thing where I can't concentrate. When I apply a few minutes to this question I come up with the answer of "Information Overload".
While normal people have a structured life - Monday through Friday - they get up, get dressed, leave the house, drive the same roads to work, get to work, go to lunch, drive back home on the same roads. The change for them is the weekends and what they do that is different. They can keep track of the days with sayings like "Mad Monday", or "Hump Day" for Wednesday. Memorable days stand out for them, like with me, when something earth shaking happens. The boss chews them up, a piece of equipment goes to shit when they are in the middle of work, they get bad news from home or a colleague, or a child wakes in the middle of the night vomiting.
With me a typical day will begin in one city and end in another state. The highway system traversing the United States is extensive and interconnected. To get from one place to another means often taking different highways. The landscapes change from a multitude of trees to stark and barren vistas. There will be days when the only contact with another person is radio contact with my husband, either in front of me or behind me. Quick stops at a truckstop fuel island and in to pay. When we stop at restaurants we will often converse with other patrons to keep in practice of talking. We do have telephone conversations with our children but the conversations can be fraught with a multitude of distractions. Merging onto a highway, slowing down for construction, avoiding a pot hole, being launched in the air from a particularly bad bump at a bridge transition. I continually ask "What was I saying?".
This job is not for everyone. You have to be able to be "With Yourself". If you have to have constant company on your travels through life this isn't the job for you. This job has a LOT of quiet time. Anyone struggling with life's lessons can be driven crazy. "I wish I had said that. I should have done this. Why didn't I do such and such."
If you are the wife of a truck driver, and I have been one, it is difficult to stay home for days and weeks at a time with the company of children only. When the traveling spouse comes home the bed and sleep are uppermost in their mind. It is taxing on a relationship. A bad one will only get worse. The perception of the traveling spouse is they get to eat out all the time while the at home spouse has to cook. The traveling spouse gets to see so much and the at home spouse is stuck where they are.
I can attest to the fact that neither side of this situation is better than the other. The grass is just as brown on my side as it is on the other side.
When an at home spouse asks the traveling spouse what they saw on their trip and get the answer "nothing", it is true. The at home spouse thinks of all the places they would like to visit and the traveling spouse gets to see all those places. The truth is, we get to see all those places as we pass them at 60 miles an hour or the highway systems takes us far around the place and we don't see it at all.
For example - The Grand Canyon. Flagstaff, AZ is one of the places that leads to the Grand Canyon. In our travels we go through Flagstaff, AZ and just keep going. There are billboards all over attesting to the fact that you can get to the Grand Canyon from there but we don't know that for a fact. The Grand Canyon is miles away from Flagstaff, AZ and on a totally different road system.
We see America from the Interstate System, not off the beaten paths. 
New York City is seen from the Interstate as we go through. I would not be able to tell you where Broadway and the Theater District are.
This is our view of New York City. When someone asks if we've been there our memories are of really bad pot holed roads, traffic up the wazoo, not allowed on roads named "Parkway", and we can't go through the Holland Tunnel. Dread, complete and utter dread is what I feel when we have to go through New York City. The George Washington Bridge is bumper to bumper traffic no matter what time we get on it. The toll prices are $15 to $30 depending on which bridge or tollway we go on. When we finally get through New York and the surrounding towns heading north to Connecticut and Vermont I can breath again. The state of hyper awareness we have to be in traveling through densely populated areas is enough to raise our blood pressure into dangerous levels.
By the time we get home for a few days I don't want to go anywhere. I just want to be in jammies and not see the outside of my house, let alone the inside of a vehicle, until I absolutely have to. At home for a week the first couple days I am really snappish and highly volatile. Not pleasant to be around at all. I just want to zone out. Watch endless television, do anything that does not require thought or movement. My husband's requests for "What's to eat" get met with attacks of "I don't know, eat some cereal. Get a hot dog. Figure it out yourself." His wanting to go to the grocery store to get food while we are home, well lets just say I have a really bad attitude about the whole subject.
Man, I'm ready to get back on the road again. Get back to work.
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