Reason 457 I am turning into my mother

My mum has an uncanny knack of remember the smallest details of her childhood but when it comes to her, say, remembering which of her daughters is calling her on the phone, there are sometimes a few lapses. For example, every time I call her, the following conversation starter occurs:

Ring ring, ring ring...

Mum: 'Hello?'
Me: 'Hi Mum' (sometimes I mix it up with, hi mum, it's me)
Mum: pause......pause

[mum's train of thought] hmmmmmmm, now I spoke to Juliet the other day, Lisa on the weekend. Ah, this is the deeper voiced child, the one who insists on calling me at 730am when we've made no pre-arrangements to talk on the phone [train of thought breaks to remember if any arrangements to call were made that she may have forgotten].

Mum: pause

[mum's train of thought cont.] Yes, it's Vanessa, that one never makes arrangements.

Mum: 'Oh hello dear' (even though she says the same hello dear with all of us so she actually could have bought some time at the start while she worked out which one of us was calling).

Before I get an email from her telling me she knows which of us is which, the point I am making is that my long term memory is so much better than my short term one. Last night, Luke and I were playing the game where you sing the next line of a song. I sucked at all songs post 1996. But when TLC's Sumthin' Wicked This Way Comes I was totally channeling the late Lisa 'Left Eye' Lopez. The song I learned back in 1995 (in the peak of my R&B days) was obviously in some recess of my mind, just waiting for the day some neuron came by to pick it up to test its worth. It was probably sitting alongside the various bits of useless information my brain insists on carrying. For example, Left Eye died in a jeep accident. Of course, I don't need to remember this, yet I remember such facts over the more useful things like where full stops etc go after inverted quotes. Actually, I can't even remember whether they're called inverted quotes or commas.

Hmmmm.