My son beats me at our memory game. But I soon forget who wins

I’m struggling. I’m sure Marshall was in the top left square. I turn the tile and he stares back, but it is a different version of the furry fireman than I expected. My son swoops in to turn it over, before flicking his wrist with a victorious hoot, to reveal its twin elsewhere. I am distraught. My son pats my hand and tells me to keep going, which sharpens the sting immeasurably.

We’re playing a Paw Patrol memory game. Its rules are simple; place 24 pairs of images face down and turn them over two at a time. Find a match, and you withdraw those two cards to your own personal stash, otherwise you flip them both back over and your opponent takes their turn. In theory, every wrong effort adds more knowledge to your arsenal, as you build up a mental Rolodex of the slowly growing grid in front of you. The problem, in fact the existential horror unfolding before me, is that I find I can’t remember a bloody thing.

I’ve noticed my memory fading a little. Names, faces, places, dates. Where I’ve put things, what things I’ve put away. This has no doubt been exacerbated by the effects of a ‘well-lived’ period in my 20s and not greatly helped by the assault on my sleep engendered by parenting two small children. Some of it, I suppose, can be ascribed simply to the mundane patterns of ageing, but I’m not the finely tuned instrument of recall I once was.

And I truly was. Memory was my thing. I spent my entire childhood and most of my adult life charming and delighting [citation needed] those around me with astounding acts of recollection. Dinosaurs, planets, football stadia, historical events. You know that guy who knows all the other things an actor has been in and interrupts your peaceful night of movie watching to point them all out? That cool, attractive type of guy? That was me. I could reel off entire lines of poetry or prose from memory and list obscure facts I’d read a decade or longer ago.

Now, I occasionally walk into rooms with no idea why I’ve done so, only to check my hand to see that it’s making a cutting motion, thus spurring my brain to remember I was looking for scissors. In such cases, I long for the condescension of my son, who is at least a living, breathing person and not my own right hand, trying its best to work around the stupid, broken brain to which it’s attached.

My wife comes in later to find me sheepishly tilting my laptop screen away from her. She is momentarily delighted to have caught me engaged in something salacious, but is disappointed to find I’m doing an online memory test, my third this week. She tells me I’m overthinking it, that I’m just tired, our son is a memory genius and she certainly can’t recall any big lapses in my memory recently. ‘You can’t?’ I ask, and I want to be relieved. Instead, I place the laptop in her hands, so we can check her skills just to be sure.

Did Ye Hear Mammy Died? by Séamas O’Reilly is out now (Little, Brown, £16.99). Buy a copy from guardianbookshop at £14.78

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