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was just going to ask you-where do you think you are?'
       'I see these beds, and these patients everywhere. Looks like a sort of hospital to me. But hell, what would I be doing in a hospital-and with all these old people, years older than me. I feel good, I'm strong as a bull. Maybe I work here … Do I work? What's my job? . . . No, you're shaking your head, I see in your eyes I don't work here. If I don't work here, I've been put here. Am I a patient, am I sick and don't know it, Doc? It's crazy, it's scary … Is it some sort of joke?'
       'You don't know what the matter is? You really don't know? You remember telling me about your childhood, growing up in Connecticut, working as a radio operator on submarines? And how your brother is engaged to a girl from Oregon?'
       'Hey, you're right. But I didn't tell you that, I never met you before in my life. You must have read all about me in my chart.
       'Okay,' I said. 'I'll tell you a story. A man went to his doctor complaining of memory lapses. The doctor asked him some routine questions, and then said, "These lapses. What about them?" "What lapses?" the patient replied.'
       'So that's my problem,' Jimmie laughed. 'I kinda thought it was. I do find myself forgetting things, once in a while-things that have just happened. The past is clear, though.'
       'Will you allow me to examine you, to run over some tests?'
       'Sure,' he said genially. 'Whatever you want.'
       On intelligence testing he showed excellent ability. He was quick-witted, observant, and logical, and had no difficulty solving complex problems and puzzles-no difficulty, that is, if they could be done quickly. If much time was required, he forgot what he was doing. He was quick and good at tic-tac-toe and checkers, and cunning and aggressive-he easily beat me. But he got lost at chess-the moves were too slow.
       Homing in on his memory, I found an extreme and extraordinary loss of recent memory-so that whatever was said or shown to him was apt to be forgotten in a few seconds' time. Thus I laid out my watch, my tie, and my glasses on the desk, covered them, and asked him to remember these. Then, after a minute's chat, I asked him what I had put under the cover. He remembered none of them-or indeed that I had even asked him to remember. I repeated the test, this time getting him to write down the names of the three objects; again he forgot, and when I showed him the paper with his writing on it he was astounded, and said he had no recollection of writing anything down, though he acknowledged that it was his own writing, and then got a faint 'echo' of the fact that he had written them down.
       He sometimes retained faint memories, some dim echo or sense of familiarity. Thus five minutes after I had played tic-tac-toe with him, he recollected that 'some doctor' had played this with him 'a while back'-whether the 'while back' was minutes or months ago he had no idea. He then paused and said, 'It could have been you?' When I said it was me, he seemed amused. This faint amusement and indifference were very characteristic, as were the involved cogitations to which he was driven by being so disoriented and lost in time. When I asked Jimmie the time of the year, he would immediately look around for some clue-I was careful to remove the calendar from my desk-and would work out the time of year, roughly, by looking through the window.
       It was not, apparently, that he failed to register in memory, but that the memory traces were fugitive in the extreme, and were apt to be effaced within a minute, often less, especially if there were distracting or competing stimuli, while his intellectual and perceptual powers were preserved, and highly superior.
       Jimmie's scientific knowledge was that of a bright high school graduate with a penchant for mathematics and science. He was superb at arithmetical (and also algebraic) calculations, but only if they could be done with lightning speed.