Amen ! (As witness the various tales in this thread, of people forgetting about highly-important things -- or people -- in their charge, prompted by this comment.)
I'm tempted to think that perhaps highly bright / talented people have more of a tendency to this sort of vagueness, than do us "average Joes". Am reminded of an experience long ago, of myself and a fellow-railway-enthusiast -- an academically brilliant guy with a stratospherically high IQ, but the quintessential "absent-minded professor". This gentleman and I had plans for a joint rail "bash" of a country at the other end of Europe, which interested us. Our respective circumstances meant that we had arranged to meet up actually out there, in the capital city. Subsequent experience made it clear to me, that one did not make rendezvous-ing arrangements with this chap -- there was a more than 90% likelihood of his messing them up, and the meeting not happening; but at the time of this venture, I had yet to discover that. In case of our first rendezvous failing; we had back-up plans A and B, for different venues in the country, x and y hours later -- all very John le Carre, and, we thought, foolproof; but re that word, "the boundless ingenuity of fools..."
On my friend's outward journey by rail, he left his compartment for a meal in the dining car, leaving his luggage on the compartment overhead rack. During his absence, some less-than-honest citizen rifled his luggage; taking various things from it, including the piece of paper on which he had written, in full, our rendezvous-ing arrangements. His memories of same were vague and incomplete: things so worked out, that I turned up for all our three alternative rendezvous -- he was at none of them; he tried to take measures to contact me, which fell through -- ultimately, after a couple of days he gave up and went home; I did the bash (with some modifications because of the messing-around) solo. I had to wonder why in heaven's name, my friend had not had the nous to keep the written-down details of our meeting-up plans, on his person; but that (can be) people for you...
