When I'm 64

One of the things about growing older is that your mind begins to falter. Add that to having several closed head injuries in your lifetime and it becomes darn near impossible to recall names of things, people and most especially adverbs. This problem is most apparent in conversation.

Just a simple example here: You want to talk to your spouse about painting the trim on your house. You are talking away, the flow of your creative juices pouring effortlessly from your mouth when suddenly, out of nowhere, you forget what the name of that thing you enter your house through is called.  You start to panic, you search your mental file cabinets frantically for the name of said item. You can't find it anywhere. You draw a total blank. (this all happens in nanoseconds btw) You begin to stutter. "and the color I am envisioning on the, the, the, ummmm... the.. you know that thing you enter the house through...ummmm (you still can't remember what it's called and you are looking right at it at the moment)". Your spouse looks at you and says "door?", you say "Yeah! the door." Now you feel like an idiot.

At this point you are thankful she loves you, because anyone else would think you are a moron. You might actually be a moron, but even a moron can remember the name of that thing you enter your house through. You feel lower than a moron.

Now this might not bother too many people, but if you were a verbose one such as I, this is demoralizing.  You end up choosing words with less than four syllables because you can't remember the word you are searching for. You feel like you should be writing for the National Enquirerer or working for Fox News.

Now is when you start cursing yourself for not taking better care of yourself when you were young. You wonder why you thought taking nose dives into brick walls was fun when you were a kid. You begin to consider that maybe you really are a moron considering you dove head first into bricks walls as a child (on more than one occasion I might add).  Your old resentment toward your big brother for putting that sledge hammer in your skull rears it's ugly head.

Today, I started to post something on Geekfest. It was a thread about the economy here in Eureka. My expertise is in marketing. I wanted to post something about how the last 4 quarters in my business has been adversely affected by the Iraq war. I had historical data to back it up. The problem was, I couldn't remember half the nomenclature necessary in order to sound authoritative. I searched and searched, but it wasn't there. I gave up because it was humiliating me to sit there pondering the nomenclature of a profession I practiced for over 20 years.

Getting old sucks. That and oxygen depravation.