The fear of forgetting

Occasionally, when we get to a certain age—that is, our age—we start to have difficulty remembering stuff. Like where we put the house keys, if we left the water running in the bathtub or the Pythagorean theorem. Yes, this happens to all of us from time to time. In fact, studies show that about a third of members of our generation have trouble knowing where I put my glasses.

And of course, we worry about this, concerned that it may all be a sign of the big D. But in fact, it’s a normal part of aging, a function of the brain, having been operating on high for so many decades, now overloaded with useless information like who was Michael Dukakis’s running mate in 1988 (Lloyd Bentsen) and the last line of the movie Some Like It Hot (“Nobody’s perfect,” of course.).

According to the most recent research, if you’re old enough to remember disco, every minute of the day you lose 17,211 brain cells, and even more if you’re watching Fox & Friends. And the remaining cells have to work extra hard and can get winded, forcing the cerebellum to just want to lie down on the couch and take a nap. Plus, with so many brain cells gone, it’s naturally tough to remember where you put the car keys, even if you put them in the ignition.

And yet, though we occasionally forget the word for that large African animal with tusks and a trunk, we all do still remember odd bits of fluff. For instance, I can immediately sing along to all the words from Little Richard’s “You Keep A-Knocking, But You Can’t Come In” (admittedly, the song has only about eleven words, and they are repeated multiple times, but still), and I can recall, with little effort, the lineup of the 1960 Yankees.

[Tony Kubek, Gil McDougald, Roger Maris, Mickey Mantle, Yogi Berra, Bill Skowron, Elston Howard, Bobby Richardson]

And yet like all of us, I sometimes don’t remember where I’ve put my slippers, the mail I was carrying in from the mailbox, the newspaper I was just reading or the cookie I was just sneaking. I’ve lost track of the joke I was telling, the conversation I was having or the name of the movie I just saw last night.  

I sometimes can’t remember names of people I know well and sometimes I’ve started sentences and forgotten midway through how they were supposed to . . .

(got it!) end.

All of us joke a bit about these kind of memory lapses or call them “senior moments,” mainly because we would rather not call them Alzheimer’s. As we forget little things, and then more little things, we all start to develop that fear of dementia, which has a generally pejorative connotation. Every time we forget an inconsequential little thing—like, where are my keys? or what’s the name of that actor in that show that we saw last night? or where do I live and who am I married to?—we understandably view it as a possible sign of incipient dementia.

A friend of mine had exactly this fear a while ago. She had been forgetting things, like her glasses and where she parked her car, so she went to her doctor to ask for some tests to see if she might have early-onset Alzheimer’s. The doctor reassured her that she was too old for early-onset anything.

Unfortunately, Marsha has no memory of the doctor appointment and still can’t find her car. I, fortunately, have a garage.

This story is adapted from Neil Offen’s book, Building a Better Boomer.