Old Age MAY Be Just Down the Road, But I Lost My Car Keys Again

Somehow I have developed a reputation in my family as being astoundingly technologically impaired, but in reality I am totally techno hip. For example, I possess the knowledge of changing the speed on a record player so that the singers sound like Alvin and the Chipmunks.  I can still totally kick butt on Atari Pong (well, I could kick my cat’s butt anyway). And anytime you rent a VCR, don’t have a cow! I can set it up for you in a jiffy! And rewind it, too.  Truth be told, my techno-hipness comes and goes: When I was in college, my first experience with a microwave didn’t go so well. (How was I supposed to know that pots aren’t microwavable?) But even if my techno skills aren’t always cutting edge, I reject the notion that being technologically challenged means I’m getting old.

That being said, here are my Three Top Clues that old age MAY be around the corner for me:
I have trouble staying up late. I truly can’t remember the last time I made it to 10:30 p.m. on New Year’s Eve. But that may be because I can’t even remember what day it is half the time.
It may be a sign of something that my husband and I have to finish each others’ sentences because we usually get hopelessly lost what day it is half the time.

If forgetfulness was truly a sign of old age, I could have joined AARP before I was legally old enough to be considered an adult. Surprisingly, I remember very clearly the time in highschool that I locked myself out of the house three times in one evening--and one of them wasn’t even mine! Okay, that was an exaggeration: I don’t remember that evening at all; I just wrote it down at the time. I also used to have a bad habit of locking myself out of my car. I didn’t carry a purse or backpack at the time, so to keep from having to shove a wad of keys the size and shape of a medieval flail in the pocket of my 501 jeans, I would just toss them under the driver’s seat when I got out. The problem occured when I got back to the parking lot and realized that I couldn’t even remember which car was mine. The upside to all of this is that I got really good at breaking into cars, and jimmying locks on apartment doors with a slightly damaged credit card. And when you’re a poor college student, these skills become invaluable.

If, like me, you occasionally tend to lose track of things, there is good news. According to a recent article in the Wall Street Journal, “The average person misplaces up to nine items a day.” [In truth, this factoid was more troubling to me than reassuring--if I truly misplace that many items a day, evidently I am also completely unaware of having lost 7 or 8 of them.] The article goes on to state the following, “Everyday forgetfulness isn't a sign of a more serious medical condition like Alzheimer's or dementia….
“Stress, fatigue, and multitasking can exacerbate our propensity to make such errors.” While we’re on the subject, do you ever get exacerbate and exasperate mixed up? How about lose and loose? And where do you stand on regardless and irregardless? Think carefully before you chose to respond.

Now where was I? Oh yeah. If the above statement is true, it seems to me that the closer we are to retirement, the better we will be at remembering things, because we’ll be past the stage of life where we are fatigued, stressed, and prone to multitasking. Actually, this rather makes me look forward to getting older...that and the Early Bird Dinner Specials a friend recently told me about.

Yes, the prospect of getting older is a mixed bag:
The first time my younger sister spotted a gray hair growing deliberately out of my scalp at age 17, I laughed. (Denial)
The first time a grocery store cashier called me “ma’am”, I was in my early 20s, and I was kind of annoyed. (Anger)
The first time a teenager asked me, when I was in my early 30s, “How did you feel the first time you realized they were playing your songs on the Oldies station,” I was so astonished by the question, that it didn’t occur to me until hours later that they didn’t actually play my music on the Oldies station. (Bargaining. In point of fact, I am not 100% sure that this would be considered “bargaining”, but that’s what’s comes next in the Kubler-Ross model.)
The first time I discovered, in my mid-40s that I had Oogway neck, I almost cried. (Depression)
BUT...
Naps. (Acceptance)

So, how do I know I’m not yet a geezer? I honestly can’t remember…what day it is half the time.