WHERE HAVE ALL OUR MARBLES GONE?

Jer and I went to a little out-of-the-way restaurant yesterday in Chino and while waiting for our food we got to talking about odds and ends. He didn’t know the answer to one of the questions I asked him and said I probably could find an answer on Google. Ten minutes later we made another reference to Google and I thought I’d better write down these two things, lest I forget.

I dug into my purse for paper and pen, wrote “To Check on Google” at the top, and poised my pen to write the first thing that we’d talked about. My pen stayed up in the air. I could not remember what it was that I was going to check on.

I asked Jer if he remembered what it was I was going to check. His face was as blank as mine was. I have always kidded him about us having superior brains – and we may have had them in the past, but what has happened now is that those brains do not function very well in the memory department. In fact, they are doing a downright lousy job of retaining even important stuff.

Not only did we not remember what the first item was but we also didn’t remember the second one. There I sat with my paper as blank as our brains. Neither of us could come up with what we had talked about not ten minutes earlier.

This is old age.

My cousin called me last night from North Carolina and we chatted for a while. She has had surgery on her legs and she tries to keep them elevated as often as possible, so she was telling me about engineering some kind of a tray that would fit on her “---------- chair” to hold her computer mouse. The “----------“ was because she could not bring into her mind or her mouth the chair she was referring to. The word was totally gone. I asked if she meant “recliner” and sure enough, it was the word she had lost. We commiserated with each other about what aging does to our brains and how funny but discouraging it is. We agreed we didn’t think we had a serious problem, yet. We agreed that everyone who is aging experiences glitches like ours, and we admitted these things also happened in middle age but we just didn’t assign such a dire prognosis to it.

I told my cousin I’d read that nothing we learned was lost; it was just rolling around somewhere in our brain and might make an appearance again, or might not. The minute I said that I remembered what it was that I wanted to look up on Google! Just like that! I told my cousin to hold on while I brought a book down from the shelf behind me which probably contained the answer – but I wanted the book in front of me so I’d have less chance of forgetting the question again! Cuz and I finished our conversation satisfied; she had her recliner chair and I had my answer book. All was right with the world again, for a while, at least.

I know we aren’t the only ones who go through this. I try to be nice to myself and not stress unduly over these little lapses. I am sure I still have all my marbles --- somewhere. I just have to wait for them to appear, sometimes. And so far I keep laughing at them. What I don’t understand is how I could have gotten so old so fast? Does anyone have a sensible answer for that?

And just so you will know, there IS a town in California called Jolon, which was a real surprise to me. GoogleEarth showed it to me. It is in a valley between the Pacific Ocean on the west and Highway 101 on the East, and is north of Paso Robles. Six miles north of Jolon is the third mission (San Antonio de Padua) that was founded by Father Junipero Serra back in September of 1771.

Why all this was so important for me to know is a mystery but at least now I can put it to rest. Perhaps one of these days we will decide to take a drive and head up toward Jolon, unless old age strikes again and we forget all about it.