Hidden in plain sight.

Everyone has had the experience of searching for a lost or misplaced object only to discover that it had been right in front of you all the time and somehow you did not 'see' it.  I don't mean forgetting where you just placed something -short term memory difficulties - but having difficulty in finding something you are looking for when it has been in clear sight all the time.  Clearly it's a matter of perception and not of memory.  As far as I can tell, we're dealing here with a problem in separating something from its background, of making the lost  coffee cup  or whatever foreground and everything else background.  You pass over it again and again and then -pop- there it is and you, wonder; how could I not have seen it?  I wonder too.
   Foreground / background is a distinction we clearly learn early in life, a distinction that can become 'rusty' in some situations, especially as we age..And it is a full scale pain in the ass if you need what you are looking for and- here's the bad news- it becomes way more common as you drift into old age.  Also, it is one of those things that makes you look old and silly in the eyes of youth, like your mind is beginning its slide into senile decay.  Add this to  a deteriorating short-term memory and you become the stereotype of the dottering old country cleric in British novels.

On the tip of your tongue

My wife and I are discussing a recent Sherlock Holmes movie and I want to say something about Dr. Watson and, to my utter frustration, I cannot remember the name!  Not only that but I know from experience that no amount of effort will bring if forward.  The dreaded tip of the tongue phenomenon.  From time to time it strikes us all, it has been recorded in dozens and dozens of languages, there must be a whole book full of theories as to its cause, it is not regarded as a pathology - something on the road to dementia.  It is an equal opportunity annoyance, striking the old and the young alike.  But having said that, the bad news is that it becomes increasingly more frequent as you grow older.  Now, at 75, I can depend on having any number of tip of the tongue experiences every waking day and they drive me to distraction.  Obscure facts, figures - no problem.  I am as good as I was at 19, actually better because I now have an arsenal of tens of thousands at my disposal.  But at any moment I can( temporarily) ' forget' the name of Marylin Monroe, Ayn Rand or Niels Bohr.  A few years back, coming out of retirement to teach at university for a term, I had to keep a little note card with a list of familiar names and terms it would be a disaster if I forgot.  What a huge pain!!  I ran the risk of appearing like a senile fool or that is how I felt. 
     Recently I was watching an interview with Christopher Plummer, still vitally acting at the age of 82, and I thought - what does he do about tip of the tongue stuff?  Has he found a way to conquer it?  Does it not occur in actors?  I'd love to know.

Slowing down

A long time ago I read somewhere about an exercise in which young people were physically restricted in one way or another so that everything they normally did they had to do slower and the result was that their behavior mimicked that of an elderly person.  More than anything else, as you age you slow down.  It's a biological imperative and there is nothing much you can do but learn to live with it.  So here's an something you younger people can do to see what you are in for. 
  Restrict the use of your dominant hand.  Wear a heavy work glove so that you have to depend much more on your left (if you are right handed) hand.  Tape one of your knees heavily so it doesn't bend easily and you are unable to walk rapidly.  If you wear glasses, don't wear them and if you don't, find a pair of cheap reading glasses and put them on.  Now, go about your day.  Attempt to hurry through the supermarket shopping.  Try to use your cell phone.  Drive your car.  Get money from an ATM.  Pay your bill with a debit card.  Stick to it for three or four hours.  Go ahead and discover a bit of what it is like to be normally healthy and 75-80 years old.    The rusty machinery is slowing you down. And now, remember that things of this sort are taking place in your brain as well.  It's more of a chore to remember things.  You can but it's just a lot more work.  It's more difficult to make decisions.  You get more easily confused.  You get tired and your brain thinks how nice it would be to sit down for a rest in a nice comfortable chair or to take a nap. 
    Admittedly, everybody ages differently  Some people at 55 are well into their dotage and some 80+ year olds amazingly young but every 80 year old is a slowed down version of their youth.  Believe it.

To those of you who don't know me

You will note that my blogs are usually peppered with misspellings, consonants just kind of hanging around attached to nothing, unnecessary plurals, etc.  It has nothing to do with either my age or my nerdism.  I am quite dyslexic and it is almost impossible for me,by myself,  to edit my own writing.  To do it right, I have to copy it on to paper and even there I don't catch everything.  When I was a boy my parents could not understand why I found reading so difficult when I was clearly exceptionally intelligent.  Public schools labeled me as a 'daydreamer'; they were clueless as was everyone else.  Then, somewhere around the age of ten, I figured out how to get around my affliction and went from a Fifth Grade reading level to the 11th Grade, all in one school year.  I still don't know what I do or how I do it for I can easily cruse through a novel at 3000 words a minute but I cannot edit my own writing.  When I read magazines I begin at page 1 and read on, page by page ,until I come to the last one.  It's the same with news papers; I don't follow each individual article.  In college, when I was assigned something to read, I would zip through it three for four times in a row rather than plow slowly along.  It's all very eccentric but then, like all nerds, I am an eccentric individual.

A life-long affliction

Nerdism is the province of the young, young males especially....right?  Wrong!!  Wrong by a mile.  In three months I will reach my 76th birthday and I am a nerd, a life-long nerd.  As long as I can remember I have been a nerd and I will die a nerd. Oh, to be sure I have picked up more than my share of social graces during my long life, overcome my pathological shyness and ceased sharing my more eccentric interests with everyone I meet, but I remain physically awkward, my sense of humor is sometimes far out in left field, and I cannot help but salt conversations with odd facts and little know trivialities the relevance of which is known only to myself. I have graduate degrees in zoology and anthropology and consuming interests in linguistics, philosophy and history.   I live a large part of my life inside my head.
   I am an elder nerd and that is not an easy thing to be.  Nerdism , all forms of nerdism,  hinges on a bigger than life intellect and thus, on an unusually agile brain and here is where the problem lies.  As we know, the first signs of the ultimate descent into senility show up in early middle age, pointing the way to memory loss, absentmindedness, clouded thinking, compromised judgement, inability to multi-task and, to the most unfortunate - dementia.   Being 75 years old is hard enough.  Being a 75 year old nerd requires real effort.  My short-term memory is in shreds.  Never a wiz at financial affairs, I am now an unmitigated disaster.  Multi-tasking is a dim memory.  And it's all going to get worse.  In my younger days, things like credit card numbers I committed to memory - ten digits no problem at all.  Now, I have trouble with new phone numbers.  If I could not write, were I not an individual who compulsively keeps lists, I would be totally adrift. 
    Surely there are 90 year old nerds but I wonder how they do it.  How are all you unredeemed nerdy types handling a physical machine heading for the scrap heap?  Golf? Bridge? Bingo?  Surely, that is not our fate; we- a segment of the intellectual elite. For me, I want to go gently into that good night contemplating the beauty of the periodic table and puzzling over the difficulty taxonomies of various families of butterflies.  Ladies and gentlemen, how do you do it?