Some of this relates to what I have been thinking about lately.
I have never had a very good memory for everyday things. Really! I'm always returning for something I forgot. But, I seem to do okay with the casual sort of routine stuff.
I did, however, wash my wallet once. It wasn't as horrible as it might sound. Most everything dried with no damage and I was able to accomplish that with just 24hrs of warm furnace air and without DW learning of it

!
I once stepped into the shower with a hearing aid. Only one, don't know quite how that happened but I probably didn't turn towards the running water until ... it was too late! Repair job

!
Ya know, once in so many years (& ears

), ain't bad! I worry about memory loss now, however.
What would it be like to forget how to drive? I mean the basics, not like street names and where they intersect. What would it be like to not recognize the difference between brake and accelerator pedals? What about the purpose of speed signs and lanes on a street? A young person might imagine that someone who wouldn't know would likely be in some sort of vegetative state. Someone of my age, knows better.
Just go back several years, kiddo. It's a long time for me but at 19, you ain't far from pre-school. And, looking through the car windows, did you really know what the signs meant, where the cars were to be driven, and how to drive them? Were you in a vegetative state at 4 years old?
We might believe that skills long practiced are second nature until learning that people we are close to have lost all of these skills. And, we realize that some of the folks with the confused or distracted or vacant look behind the eyes are about our age ...
Steve