Have YOU Had Your First Senior Moment Yet?

Not much happening on the political front over the past few days, although it was nice to hear that the opposition leader in Myanmar, Aung San Suu Kyi, was released from house arrest on Saturday, after being detained for a total of 15 out of the past 21 years. Of course, if she tries to push her activism too far, and too fast, the military regime there would have no qualms about having her silenced, and incarcerated again. It should remind us in the west of the privilege that we have here in that we have free speech, which has been passed on to us because of the sacrifices made by our forefathers. We should certainly make use of those privileges, especially while our minds and memories are still active, and capable of lucid thought!

As I've now passed the three score mark in terms of years spent on the planet, I've gone through my apprenticeship in Senior Moments, or temporary amnesia, as some may prefer to call it. I can easily remember events of 50 years ago – the first stolen turnip from the neighbour's croft, the first stolen kiss – there was no difference in taste, as she had been partaking of raw turnip as well. Anyway, nowadays, I sometimes forget my best friend's name, or what programme I watched on telly last night. I am sometimes scared of what I'm going to say, and scared of the fact that I might have to stop talking altogether by the time I'm 70 – some have resorted to doing exactly that, just to be on the safe side. Some have turned to pills, believing all the hype about some tablets with natural ingredients etc. that can reverse this memory loss by increasing the blood flow to the brain.

All bunkum, I reckon! Most of our ancestors seemed to retain their memories well into their 80s and beyond, so why has our capability to do so disappeared? I don't reckon that the blood flow to the upper regions of our body has anything to do with it – it is just that in the past fifty years or so, most folk have been in schools, colleges etc. for longer than our forefathers were, thus leaving our brains with hundreds or even thousands of more facts crammed into them. In our History classes, we had dates rammed into us – remember 1066 (Battle of Hastings), 1215 (Magna Carta first issued), 1492 (Columbus landed in the Bahamas), 1914 (Outbreak of First World War)? In Geography lessons, we had to cope with an increasing number of names, as countries fought each other, overran each others' lands, which inevitably resulted in new names being given to those lands, thus leaving our brains with even more information to take on board. This was true in respect of most subjects, leaving our memories with far too much to cope with. Unlike computers, us humans cannot just add more memory capabilities when we want to. The only solution is to make more room for new information that is fed to us, which means that we should ditch all the useless stuff that has accumulated over the years. All those dates, the older names for countries, names of folk you never see anymore etc. should be ditched immediately. We should make some room for today's snippets of information to have some more storage space.

Of course, a lot of us have wasted our energy in our earlier years by beating around the bush, jumping to conclusions, trying to climb the success ladder, bending over backwards, making mountains out of molehills, and so on. Those needless exertions and worries are bound to have an adverse effect on our grey matter in later years. Having said that, so called senior moments are not necessarily the domain of the older generation. I happened to have an appointment with a doctor, 20 years my junior, a few months ago, and asked him to renew my prescription for a cream that I use to help alleviate arthritis pain. He said that he was going to give me tablets instead, as they were more effective in his opinion, and that he really couldn't understand why I'd been prescribed cream in the first instance. After looking through some notes, he matter of factly said to me, “Oh, I see that it was myself who suggested you have cream in the first place.” Years before that, whilst I was bricklaying, I had an apprentice joiner working with me for a few days, renovating a house. We only had 2 ladders on the job, and I recall a certain morning that I was using one of them to get materials up to the scaffold, when I heard him calling me, asking me if I knew where the other ladder was. It was difficult for me to explain to him, whilst keeping a straight face, that he was standing on it! Only last week, I had a new washing machine installed, but unfortunately the valve connecting the hose to the outside pipe was damaged, resulting in no water getting through, and so I had to phone a plumber. I got a hold of a guy who I guessed was in his forties, explained the situation, and got told that they were very busy, and that it might be a few days before they could send someone out to fix it – I was then asked if it was urgent. As my friends know, I am usually a patient fellow, so I calmly replied replied that I found that the laundry invariably seemed to turn out better if there was water in the machine. There was no reply – I think he was contemplating his first junior senior moment.

I think it's time to make a dignified exit, as my mind has started to wonder about how rabbits know which burrow to make for – they all look alike to me (the bunnies and their burrows).

Brain Scans and Ice Cream

I had to take some time off from my lucrative printing business yesterday in order to have a CT scan of the remnants of the old brain. It’s actually quite a pleasant experience – you pop your head under a kind of dome, shut your eyes to protect them from laser beams being shot at you, lie back and think of …….. well, anything, apart from England. After leaving there, I bought a paper to see how much my shares in “Counterfeit Banknotes PLC” had risen in the previous 24 hours.

 

Being well satisfied, I cast a glance at the health pages – after all, I hope to have time left in which to enjoy my hard earned moolahs. I noticed that scientists are developing a sort of helmet that fires soundwaves into the skull, which are then converted into images to show doctors what is happening deep inside the brain. This means that a stroke can be diagnosed within minutes, rather than hours, as usually happens at present. Soundwaves are fired through both temples, with each one penetrating up to 4 inches inside the skull, meaning that even clots deep inside the brain can be detected. Previous attempts at using ultrasound on the brain have largely failed because the density of the skull distorts the echo from soundwaves. I’m afraid that it wouldn’t work in the case of certain politicians, as their skulls are simply too thick.

 

On a lighter note, I read last week that penguins are able to jump as high as 6 feet in the air. As the world record currently stands at 8 feet 0.46 inches, they will have to do some serious training before the Olympics are next held in Antarctica.

 

I noticed in the same bulletin that in Kentucky, it’s illegal to carry ice cream in one’s back pocket. If someone is charged with this heinous offence, I would suggest that they do not sit down whilst in the courtroom.