Act 3, finding amnesia.

Who among us, wanting to get over it, has not wanted amnesia?

But you know, one thing about amnesia, one frustrating thing,

is that it seems to happen a lot more in television and movies and novels than it ever does in real life.

I hear an article from Romantic Times Magazine, April of 1996, they list

here 40 different romance novels that are on the shelves now, where amnesia is the plotline.

But does it really happen? Have you ever met anybody who it happens to? Well, we asked reporter Scott Carrier in Salt Lake City to find out if it does really happen.

The idea was to find someone who had amnesia and asked them what it was like in real life.

I was warned that it might be difficult to locate such a person, that the affliction may,

in reality, be quite rare, but that there was at least one known amnesiac living in Tennessee

and another in Pennsylvania.

The particular cities and addresses could be found if necessary.

Nonsense, I said.

I'm surrounded by amnesiacs.

This city breeds forgetfulness. There must be five or six amnesiacs in the

neighborhood around my office alone. I accepted the offer, thinking it would be an easy assignment.

I began by asking everybody I saw if they had or had had amnesia.

I did this for three days, and I tried not to be selective, but to ask everybody with whom I came into contact,

whether my wife or the checker at the grocery store, do you have or have you ever had amnesia?

And furthermore, I'd ask this each and every time I saw the person,

sometimes two or three times a day. No one admitted to currently having amnesia, but at least

one and four remembered being knocked hard on the head and losing memory from a concussion.

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