Hold on and pretend it's a plan

A geriatric doctor was describing a "mini-mental" exam which is used to try to determine whether someone is mentally incapacitated and to what extent (as it implies, there are much longer, more thorough tests for that but this is to just get a quick assessment). The test starts off with the examiner telling you three things, then you do other things like drawing the face of a clock, looking at a picture of a two dimensional object and trying to figure out what the 3-D version would look like, following simple instructions (pick up a pencil from the floor), then the examiner asks you to recall the three things they told you to remember in the beginning. One of the in-between-the-start-and-finish things were to repeat the alphabet backwards. I couldn't do it smoothly and without hesitation. I can count backwards, but dunno why the alphabet backwards is so hard.