Hey, havers of Elliot’s brain. Here’s a round-up of everything that’s set to leave your gray matter this month. Will reading this list make it stick around longer? You’d think so, but nope. The combined mental strain of work, parenthood, and compulsive social media use mean that when it’s gone, it’s gone. By the end of this month, you’ll forget:

  • Everything about the book you just read
  • The name of one of the Musketeers in your group of three kindergarten friends that were so close you called yourselves the Three Musketeers
  • Your simple, achievable New Year’s resolution
  • Your number at the DMV yesterday, despite looking at it on a piece of paper over and over again as other numbers were called, even numbers higher than your number, which seemed like gaslighting
  • That It Happened One Night is leaving the Criterion Channel at the end of the month
  • That you subscribe to the Criterion Channel
  • The existence of this one new book, even though you heard an interview with the author on NPR and said out loud to your wife, “I’d really like to check that out”
  • The names of any of the dwarves from The Hobbit except for Oin and Gloin
  • The last date in your second-longest relationship, because it wasn’t as climactic as the penultimate date when you had the fight that made you both realize it was over even if neither of you acknowledged it yet
  • The password for the app that stores all your other passwords so you only need to remember one password
  • Exactly how exhausted you were the first few weeks after your son was born and that it’s not the kind of thing you should just rush in to again
  • That a silent French movie called The Artist won Best Picture in 2012 and made 130 million dollars worldwide
  • The last phone number you knew by heart besides your own
  • The existence of one of the houseplants you got during lockdown and is still somewhere in your apartment
  • Your friend Kelsey’s boyfriend’s name, AGAIN
  • The otherwise unremarkable moment when you were sixteen and staring into your fridge and arbitrarily told yourself you would remember this moment forever
  • That you had a mild shellfish allergy as a child
  • That you ever listened to a podcast you will soon think up the premise for as if it were your own idea
  • That you need to get more condoms next time you go to CVS
  • What color your grandma’s eyes were
  • That George Clooney played a detective on an episode of The Golden Girls

But it’s not all bad! You’ll be using the freed-up space for some great new additions to your consciousness. Here’s all the stuff coming to your brain next month:

  • The chorus of that song you keep hearing at CVS that you’re pretty sure is by Halsey
  • The first three words of a viral video several of your friends put in their Instagram stories but you tap past and never actually watch
  • How your fifteen-month-old son pronounces the name of your cat Buster (“Shay”???)
  • A fact about Woodstock ’99 that was in the latest documentary about Woodstock ’99 but not the first documentary about Woodstock ’99
  • Kelsey’s boyfriend’s name, you think, but you’re wrong
  • The long backstory of a Twitter fight between two writers whose work you’ve never read
  • That your normal babysitter can’t do Thursday nights
  • That your backup babysitter can’t do this particular Thursday night
  • That the family down the hall’s fourteen-year-old daughter is CPR certified
  • The screenplay idea a guy at the restaurant has, which sounds terrible but his friend tells him is good
  • That you have an EXTREME shellfish allergy as an adult
  • Every moment of your life again, briefly, on the floor of the restaurant
  • That your grandma’s eyes were green
  • That she wants you to come with her
  • That the guy with the bad screenplay idea carries an EpiPen
  • That today’s fourteen-year-olds think you’re weird if you try and pay them for babysitting in cash
  • How much you love your wife, like, really
  • That your wife doesn’t care that you forgot to get condoms
  • That neither do you
  • That the babysitter was watching The Golden Girls on your Hulu account
  • That Quentin Tarantino played an Elvis impersonator on an episode of The Golden Girls