This is not the result of a wax buildup

It's amazing which things my children can remember from months and months ago, especially when compared with difficulty they have with parental requests from thirty, or even ten seconds ago. I even scanned over a list of known medical causes of memory loss --

Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism
Alzheimer's Disease
Brain Tumor
Cerebrovascular disease
Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease
Dementia
Depression
Drug Abuse
Encephalitis and Meningitis
Epilepsy (Seizure Disorder)
Head trauma
Human Immunodeficiency Virus
Lewy body disease
Malnutrition
Medications
Neurodegenerative diseases
Neurosyphilis
Normal pressure hydrocephalus
Parkinson's Disease
Pick Disease
Prolonged toxin exposure
Psychological/emotional disturbances
Sleep disorders
Stroke
Thyroid disease
Transient ischemic attack (TIA)
Vitamin deficiencies
Wernicke-Korsakoff syndrome
Wilson's disease

Hmmm. Nope. I don't see anything applicable to my children.

So, what about this curious dichotomy of memory that my children exhibit? I think the medical community currently accepts this well-known and wide spread childhood malady as some normal phase of development.

Let's think about this. Reesa remembers the name of the man that I bought our canoe from four months ago. She spent maybe ten minutes in the presence of this guy, and for all of it I was talking to him about price, about how well this canoe would work for us, and how to tie the thing up on the roof of the van.

Yet, she is completely incapable of recalling that ten seconds ago I asked her to pick up her shoes for the third time. Some might call this selective hearing, as if it is a sensory failure. I think people have categorized it in the same manner as an automotive problem, as if their child's auditory wiring has a periodic short circuit rendering them incapable of collecting the sound waves. And no, it's not a hearing problem, because I can test that by going to the other end of the house, closing the door and mumbling "juice box," and faster than you can say "what was that you said" the thunder of little feet would close in and a little voice would be squealing, "can I have a juice box?"

I suspect something entirely different. I think it is a evolutionary development: natural selection of those children in the species who exhibited tendencies to drive their parents to drink and an early demise, thereby creating more opportunity for the young to make their mark in the world, and to eat crackers and popsicles whenever they wish. Seems to me.