Here's three and a half hours I'll never get back

I have noticed for a while that I "talk" better when I'm writing (or typing) than I actually talk out loud.  Obviously, when I'm writing the words, I have lots of time to get things right,with nobody watching or hearing.  When I blog, I have the internet to find the right word and then change things accordingly.  Just above, I tried several way to spell "obviously" and never got close to getting it right.  After trying three or four times, I used autocorrect to get it right.  Even then, I couldn't think what the word autocorrect was, so I asked Google this question:  "Why does my cell phone sometimes change a word?"

I could go on, but you get the picture.  If I want to have a conversation with someone, I can't say, "Just a minute, I'll get my computer."  

Last week Cliff helped me put new strings on my guitar.  I got them all tuned up and started to sing "Bobby McGee" and couldn't even remember the first line.  It is my favorite song to sing, and relatives know it's "my song".  It's one of the few songs I could sing without lyrics nearby.  When my grandaughter Monica was four years old or so, she was going somewhere with her dad; he had his radio on and Janis Joplin came on singing Bobby McGee; Monica said to her dad, "Why is that woman singing Grandma's song?"

I couldn't believe I've forgotten that song I'd sang so often.  I did google the lyrics and tried to sing it, but even then I made a mess of it.

So this morning I got a thought:  Maybe if I start writing the words, one line will lead to another?  Thank goodness I did manage to remember the first line.  And sure enough, I eventually got all of it without looking it up.  A couple of times I couldn't remember a word or line, so I'd leave space for it and go to the next line, which I remembered.  Sure enough, I got every word of it without looking up the lyrics.  

To make it harder, I was writing those words with my left hand.  Some of you may remember during the Covid years I learned to write with my left hand (barely).  I mostly abandoned the idea, and you're lucky if you can read it because it's the worst penmanship you will ever see, but here it is.

  And then, without reading the lyrics at all, I sang the whole song.