Today we are going to talk about health issues again, specifically senior forgetfulness. This is an inevitable aspect of aging, so it doesn't hurt to be alert to its development while you are still in control of most of your faculties.
We all have those "senior moments" when we go into the kitchen, open the refrigerator and stand there, wondering why the laundry detergent is in the fridge. Then we take it out and wander through the living room, finally noticing that we are carrying the laundry detergent around.
This can only mean one thing!
We had been planning to do the laundry!
So we head to the laundry room and open the washer and wonder why the cottage cheese is in the washer!
It's "silver moments" like these that make us realize we are getting old. There are steps you can take, however, to defer this aging of the mind, and this is where I come in with 10 helpful hints to sharpen your mind and prevent forgetfulness.
1. It's easy to be distracted as you age. We start a story and then get completely hung up on someone's name, or the name of a movie or something, when these have nothing to do with the story we are trying to tell.
Scenario:
Senior Moment Person: Oh! I saw this really cool movie that portrays EXACTLY what you were talking about, psychic healing! One of the actors is on death row and he has this special power to heal people by sort of sucking out their bad vibes? And the main actor who is a guard in the prison wants him to help save the warden's ill wife. So the main actor... what was his name? Tom something... no... Hank... Hank Cruise... no... that's not it... let's see... he was also in that other movie... and got the Academy Award? Something... Bump... or Trump...
And on and on until the listeners drift off to sleep or leave on vacation to Hawaii only to come back a week later to find the poor senior still trying to remember who was in the movie.
So... what was I talking about?
Oh! Right.
It's important not to be distracted.
So you need to develop some pneumatic devices to help you remember. No... not pneumatic... numismatic devices. These will trigger the important memory so that you can retrieve it when you want to. So what kind of numismatic devices are we talking about here?
Wait... it's not numismatic... that is coin collecting. It was pneumonic!
So anyway... you need to make some pneumonic devices that will help you recollect the important things. For example, let's say you need to remember someone's name. You are at a party at a colleague's house and you don't want to forget the name of the hostess. Her name is Susan Fudge. This could be difficult to remember, so you need to attach a pneumonic device to her name so that when you think of the pneumonic device it will trigger...
No wait... it isn't pneumonic! That is related to lungs and stuff, like pneumonia. What WAS that word?! It's something like pneumonic or numismatic, sort of in between those two. Now that I think of it, it might be closer to that word for stamp collectors. What was that word? Something like philanthropist... philthropirest... phlampesterist... Ok, I need to look it up on-line.
It's philatelist! I am glad we got that cleared up.
2. It's important not to talk continuously about the past. Granted, we older people don't have such a promising future, but nonetheless, nobody wants to hear us drone on and on about something that happened 50 years ago that we think is interesting but has nothing to do with the conversation going on around us in the here and now.
Nobody wants to hear anecdotes about how we smoked a lot of dope in the '60s but it didn't affect our memories AT ALL, and how we quit smoking and suffered no ill effects. Although... we DID know this one guy who smoked a lot of dope back then – I am talking like several times a day. Basically he was stoned all the time. And how his mind was pretty much fried even when he was in college. But now that I think about it, he did go on to get a job in the Defense Department as an instructor or something. No, not an instructor, he was working as a counselor for Defense Department employees or something like that. So it just goes to show....
3. Everyone has had the experience of "losing" something like the car keys or reading glasses, only to have them turn up in the most obvious places, like the freezer. The way to solve this problem is to religiously put these things in exactly the same place every time. Of course, trying to remember where THAT place is can be challenging at times. So you need to have a...
4. Mnemonic! That was the word! Mnemonic! Mnemonic devices!!
5. Don't shout out when you remember something you had forgotten in an earlier conversation.
"Forrest Gump! That was the name of the movie he was in.... Forrest Gump!"
Nobody around you will have even the vaguest idea what you are yelling about, and this might be the final thing that convinces them that you should be sent to the nursing home.
You DEFINITELY don't want to go there! The diapers there are cheap and all scratchy and stuff? They don't absorb ANYTHING – nothing like the nice, soft ones you can get in the supermarket.
Plus the food sucks!
6 ~ 10. There are many other useful tips for seniors that I could leave you with today, but this is running long and it's already time for my nap.
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