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HAGATNA,
Guam—There are occasions when a person comes up to me,
says “Hi” and tries to strike a conversation while I
look at him or her blankly, trying to remember who that
person is. They look familiar and I’m sure I know them.
I rack my brain to figure out where on earth I met them.
It
embarrasses me to ask who they are, so most of the time
I throw tricky questions hoping that their response
would give me a clue.
“So,
how’s your. . . uh. . . daughter?”
It’s
even more embarrassing when they say, “Huh? I don’t have
a daughter.”
“You’re
still working at. . . um
. . . what’s the name of that company again?”
“Oh,
yeah, I’m still teaching at UOG.”
You bet
it gets more uncomfortable. This trick doesn’t always
work.
I
sometimes try the Ellen DeGeneres strategy.
“How do
you pronounce your name again?”
“Cathy.”
“Oh,
Cathy. Stress on the first syllable. I’ve always thought
the stress was on the second syllable. Sorry, I always
mispronounced your name as ‘Ca-theé.’”
When she
gives you the “you’re-so-full-of-s___” look, that tells
you the trick ain’t working, either.
This may
sound funny, but it causes me stress because it reminds
me that I am getting old.
Somehow,
it relieves me to know that this episode happens to a
lot of people, even those younger than me. OK. So I can
eliminate that as a sign of age.
But my
occasional awkward episodes in social situations are not
the only warning signs that I will soon be eligible for
a senior-citizen discount at King’s and will be playing
bingo at manamko centers.
When you
hit 40, you try to convince yourself that “40 is the new
30.”
But
then, you always hear yourself say, “Ah, kids nowadays…”
and you freak out when you see them garbed in gothic
outfits and wearing the animé hairdos (the “emo” look,
they call it).
I used
to dismiss backache and unfamiliar pains in other parts
of my body as the result of a stressful job, until I saw
recent pictures of the matinee idols during my high
school—Leif Garret, who is now balding and fat, and
Scott Baio, now wrinkly faced and undesirable.
More
than anything else, it’s really the age-related
forgetfulness that bothers me.
Let me
tell you what a senior moment is. It’s going to a
grocery, filling your cart with all kinds of stuff and
forgetting what it was that you went there for. Or
calling somebody on the phone and not remembering what
you called them for.
It will
get you in trouble if you try to remind your boyfriend:
“Do you remember when we watched Sweet Home Alabama?”
You forgot that you watched that movie with your
ex-boyfriend.
I did a
survey among people my age to ask if they experience
memory lapses. Ninety-nine percent of them say they do.
One of
them gave me a theory that sounded sublime if it didn’t
seem like she was in denial.
Forgetfulness, according to my age-defying friend, is
the result of our detail-flooded lifestyles and our
immersion in the Internet.
Maybe
that theory will make a bit of sense. We have been
accustomed to hitting “delete” when the memory is full.
But,
just the same, it didn’t stop me from searching books
about “growing old” on the Internet.
I found
one with this summary: “While growing older certainly
has plusses, its downside poses big challenges. Physical
decline, loss of spouses, relatives and friends, memory
lapses, feelings of inadequacy or uselessness—such
things can give us those senior moments that sidetrack
us with fear and worry.”
This
book brings “encouragement to people in their golden
years, prompting them to reflect, laugh, play and to
take both burdens.”
If you
want the book, its title is. . . is. . . is . . . well,
just look for it in the self-help and inspiration
section. |
