Brain Rot and Getting Old

OK, I admit that I passed the half-century mark in age quite some time ago, but I do not consider myself old, although the term “old” does seem to have taken on some fluidity over the years.  When I was a kid, 35 seemed ancient, when I got to be 35, 65 was old.  Now that I’m pushing 60, old is somewhere above 80.  And I most certainly do not consider myself to be the least bit senile, although… I have caught myself having what some would call a “senior moment” now and again.

Just the other day, it was a Saturday, the day I always fix a nice breakfast for my sweetie (omelets are my specialty, but I can do other things too) I found myself standing in the kitchen, with an array of delicious food stuffs neatly arranged on the counter, but could not for the life of me remember what I had planned to cook.  I stood there for several moments, inventorying the items I’d laid out hoping for a clue.  Finally it came to me and I forged ahead again.  But it was embarrassing, even though the dog and I were the only ones who knew about it.

It wasn’t the first time, either.  I can’t even count the times I’ve gone into another room to get or do something only to wonder, “Why did I come in here?”  That is disconcerting.  I do find that telling the dog what I’m going to go do helps me remember.  I suppose you don’t actually need a dog, but if you forget and do this while someone is visiting you don’t look quite so crazy to them.  

Addled But Not Old

But I’ve been absent-minded all my life, even as a kid I had a terrible memory.  Not that I was stupid, I was actually quite bright; scoring well above average on all the IQ tests they did on us in school, but I had a hard time remembering things that had no practical and immediate application, as I saw it.

I was an airplane buff.  I had dozens of model airplanes hanging from my bedroom ceiling.  I knew each of them on sight, and could give you statistics and anecdotal information on most any aircraft ever built.  But ask me what the capital of Romania is and I was a blank.

My buddy Mike says that brilliant people like us (grin) just have so much stuff stored in our brains that it tends to get difficult to find the one item we need when we need it.  That’s why I like Mike so much; very sensible that guy!  Mike likens the brain to a cluttered attic filled with some valued treasures scattered amid piles of useless trash.  The problem is in deciding what is junk and what is treasure and keeping the treasure within easy reach.

Mike also quotes Sherlock Holmes as having said that he deliberately forgets useless information so he retains only the important stuff.  It’s sort of like cleaning out a closet, or my shop, or a basement.  But how do we quantify what is “useless”?  How many times have we tossed out some item we haven’t used in 5 years only to need it the next week?  And how do we “erase” this junk knowledge to make room for new stuff?  Hmmmm… Sherlock could do it (or so he claimed).  But then he was fictional wasn’t he?  So he could do lots of stuff “real” people can’t.  The Incredible Hulk, for example could… oh, well, let’s not start down that path.

Perhaps the solution is to develop a sort of cranial card catalog – like a mental FAT table (stands for File Allocation Table and is used by computers to know where to look for data placed in storage media) – to help us retrieve the data we need when we need it instead of 5 hours after the need occurred.  I have read a few such suggestions, like making a clever rhyme out of people’s names to make them easier to remember.  Just don’t blurt out the “clever” mechanism instead of their name!  I’ve tried that and found that remembering some clever rhyme was even more difficult than remembering a simple name.

I have found that grasping their hand during the introduction hand shake and studying their face intently while repeating their name out loud 3 or 4 times really helps to keep their face and name connected in my mind, but the effort is wasted because it creeps them out so badly I’ll never have occasion to need to recall this information again!

There are all manner of dietary supplements that claim to increase memory, or at least slow its degradation, but I’ve had little discernible success with those.  Working puzzles and playing games that make you think does seem to keep the brain juices flowing so you don’t end up sitting on a park bench drooling on yourself and wondering how you got there.  But I’ve found no game or puzzle that increases the ability to rapidly and accurately recall stored information.

The accuracy thing is a biggie for me.  I am hesitant to engage in live discussions of topics that require the regurgitation of factual information because even when I can recall some tid-bit of news or statistical data, I seem to get it all twisted up.  Then someone has to go and correct me, which leaves me feeling very foolish indeed.  So I will share opinions, but just nod and smile a lot when they get into technical discussions.

I know I am not alone in any of this.  Most of the people I associate with seem to have much of the same trouble I do, so maybe it’s all perfectly normal for people our age.  Or maybe it’s a byproduct of modern life.

Perhaps living on a planet that is literally bathed in microwave energy from our communications devices, eating genetically engineered broccoli and hormonally enhanced chicken, as well as imbibing all manner of chemicals as additives to our food, personal care products and drinking water has had an effect the researchers are afraid to tell us about.  I don’t know for sure… maybe at one time I would have known how to test for such things, but at the moment… I forget.