OLD TIMERS DISEASE
Over the past few years I have had more and more difficulty remembering
names, appointments, faces of people I have met before and walking into a
room and wondering why I went there. Forgetting where I left my car keys
or cell phone can at time be epidemic. I assumed I was just in over load.
As the condition had not changed during down times I had a basic fear
that the onset of aging was setting in. I had thoughts of waking up one
morning and not knowing myself in the mirror or anyone else for that matter.
As I expressed these fears to others of my age and peer group most of them
would laugh and tell me I was suffering from CRS or (can't remember $%&)!
Since most of these friends were sitting at the bar having a few I though
I would consult other sources that might have clearer minds. When talking
about these “symptoms” I found a common bond between my symptoms and those
of anyone else over 50.
The following came to me through and email from a friend whom I had had
this conversation with. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did and I am
trying to search back for the author. Hopefully I will find her name and
give her credit for it.
“My girlfriends and I often wonder if we're going gaga. Although our
minds are razor-sharp, we've noticed that we suffer from increasingly
alarming lapses. The other day I left behind the $500 I had just extracted
from the cash machine. I zipped in and out of there with such efficiency
that I didn't even miss my money until the day after, when I reached into my
pleasantly fat wallet and found nothing but a wad of old grocery-store
receipts.
It's comforting to blame these mental slips on overtaking. We lead busy,
busy lives, and our brains are buzzing with big ideas and too much to do.
We've got lots of weighty matters on our minds — global warming, government
corruption, whether Calphalon cookware is better than All-Clad, and how soon
Barbara might leave Conrad now that he might go down the tubes. No wonder we
occasionally find ourselves in the middle of the Staples store and can't
remember why we're there.
But secretly, I know that over tasking cannot to blame for this
depressing deterioration of our faculties. Turning 50 is to blame. That's
when the laws of entropy kick in with a vengeance. Around the time you find
that first stout hair sprouting from your chin, you begin to lose your
glasses when they're sitting on your own head. After you turn 50, it is
dangerous to think about more than one thing at a time. If you do, you will
drive right past your own street on the way home from work, the one where
you've lived for 15 years.
"You need a minder," my husband said the last time I did this. It was
hard to argue with him.
I used to think that after we turned 50, we would experience a glorious
surge of postmenopausal zest and become more powerful and focused than ever
before. That's what Gloria Steinem said. She didn't tell us our vocabulary
would shrink. The other day I blanked out on the words for "windshield
scraper." English suddenly becomes a sort of foreign language, and you're
forced to grope for synonyms for words that have gone AWOL. The nouns are
the first to go.
My friend Barbara is even worse than I am. Although she is able to talk
brilliantly for hours about the field in which she is a leading authority,
she can't remember the names of common household objects. "Where's that
thing you use to mix the salad dressing?" she'll ask. "You know what I mean.
That thing. With the wires." Frequently her sentences are completely
unintelligible. "Can you lend me that fantastic novel by Saul Bellow, The
Bleeding Heart?" she says, when what she means is The Human Stain by Philip
Roth. She maintains that even though the things she says are factually
inaccurate, they are generally true, which is what counts.
Barbara's theory is that we only have a certain number of memory slots in
our brains, and by the time you reach age 50 they're all filled up. Your
brain has no room for new information. This wouldn't be so bad if the
information you already possessed was worth having. Unfortunately, my own
memory slots are crammed with useless junk. I can scarcely recall a single
thing I learned in five years of university. But I know the complete lyrics
to every early Beatles tune, to say nothing of the Howdy Doody theme song.
It is impossible to delete these files. This explains why I can't
remember how to program the voice mail on my cell phone, or recall the name
of somebody I met last week.
Recently I went to see my dentist, the one I've had for more than a
decade. I spent half an hour standing helplessly in the lobby of a downtown
office tower because I forgot his name and couldn't remember what floor he
was on. I thought of calling my husband to see if he knew who my dentist
was, but I had failed to memorize my husband's cell phone number.
Going gaga has certain compensations. You can read Elmore Leonard's
novels all over again, because you can't remember reading them the first
time. You can happily watch reruns of Law & Order because you forget how
they turned out, and you really can't recall why you and your husband
practically got divorced back in 1989. Sometimes I run into somebody I think
I dated in the distant past. Did I really go out with him? If so, what
happened? It used to bother me that I couldn't remember these things, but
now I think it's just as well.
Barbara reassures me that this growing mental fog is not a sign of early
Alzheimer's. It is as natural at our age as turkey neck. Still, the loss of
that $500 smarts. Yesterday I went back to the bank to see if anyone had
turned it in, but nobody had. I confessed to the woman in the bank that I
felt like a total idiot, but she was sympathetic. She says it happens all
the time.”
|
