What's your knowledge gap?

By MAMAMIA TEAM

Everyone’s got that thing that they just. Can’t. Remember. A big fat knowledge gap. It doesn’t matter how basic it is – it’s the thing that just gets deleted from your brain before it’s had the chance to be properly processed.

The Mamamia office is sometimes a forgetful one. When there’s so much going on at once, a few things invariably get lost in the frantic trail of “THE ROYAL BABY IS COMING!” and “who ate all the gelato in the freezer?”

Generally, we get through the day okay, using an incredibly complex system of Post-it notes that serve to remind us about every post that needs to go up on any particular day. (Let’s not speak of the time that the Best and Worst post-it note went missing from the wall and we forgot to put the post up on a Friday… despite the fact that it’s been happening every Friday on Mamamia for, say, about five years now.)

Just as an FYI, you should know that this post is sponsored by Post-it notes. But all opinions expressed by the author are 100% authentic and written in their own words.

There are, however, several basic skills that each of us just can’t grasp. Things that we try to remember and our brain says, “sorry. Do not compute.”

Mamamia editor Jamila can name just about any people, past, present or future, that’s ever had a position in Australia’s political sphere. She can tell you the qualifications and life history of just about any Member of Parliament that pops up on the television screen during Question Time.

And yet… she can’t remember her mobile phone number. She’s had it for about a year now and still can’t give it out to people. This got so bad that deputy editor Lucy had to write the number on a post-it note for her so that it could be stuck above her computer at all times.

Lucy might be able to remember both her own number AND Jam’s number – but she’s not so great when it comes to the kitchen, despite her own mother being a professional cook.

“I don’t remember how to cook rice,” she said. “EVER. I don’t remember the ratios. Like, water and rice – how much rice, how much water? And how do you cook corn? Do you put it all in together? And mashed potato and boiled eggs – do you put it in cold water? Hot water? When does the salt go in? Or is that pasta?”

She also doesn’t remember why Kim Kardashian is famous. Neither can anyone else in the office. We think it may have something to do with a sex tape.

Style editor Nicky’s issue is more common: she can never remember where she’s put anything. She’s constantly calling her phone from the home phone because she has no idea where it’s gone. She’s still waiting for the day when you’re also able to call items such as keys, remotes and wallets.

Site coordinator Nat is incredibly good at remembering all the other things that nobody else in the office can remember. Unfortunately, the organisation of her own life tends to suffer as a direct result. She can never remember the names of the university subjects she’s doing – contract law and corporations law and commercial law all blend together, really – and often wakes up in a cold sweat in the middle of the night, trying to work out if she was meant to go to a tutorial earlier or not.

Meanwhile, editorial assistant Melissa suffers from short-term-food-related-memory loss. She always starts making a cup of tea or a meal, and then walks off and comes back hours later, only to find that her tea or her meal is just sitting there – stone cold. She also regularly forgets to bring her packed lunch to work, leaving her poor sandwiches all abandoned at home.

But our intern Bronte had the best answer of all when we asked her about the one thing she could never remember.

“How am I supposed to remember if I can’t ever remember it?” she said.

Great question. We can’t remember the answer.

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What’s the one thing you can NEVER remember? A cringe-worthy knowledge gap?