The Big Book of Senior Moments Read online

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.

  Cover design by Jane Sheppard

  Print ISBN: 978-1-63450-361-7

  Ebook ISBN: 978-1-63450-941-1

  To my friend Dan, in case he forgot all his help on this.

  CONTENTS

  INTRODUCTION

  CHAPTER ONE: CRIME DOES NOT PAY, BUT BEING A BONEHEAD MAKES IT MORE INTERESTING

  CHAPTER TWO: FAMOUS FORGETTERS

  CHAPTER THREE: SPORTS

  CHAPTER FOUR: SEX: LIFE IS SEXUALLY TRANSMITTED

  CHAPTER FIVE: AT THE GYM

  CHAPTER SIX: EPITAPHS AND FUNERALS: THE ULTIMATE SENIOR MOMENTS

  CHAPTER SEVEN: POLITICS

  CHAPTER EIGHT: INSPIRATIONS

  CHAPTER NINE: GOOD IDEAS GONE BAD

  CONCLUSION

  INDEX

  Introduction

  The stereotype is hard to forget, and I say this with no sense of irony intended.

  A guy of a certain age shuffles though the neighborhood every day around noon in his plaid Bermuda shorts and his bathrobe, singing “Louie Louie” to himself at high volume. It’s a bit off-putting at first, but you get used to it. And you notice he’s always got a beatific smile on his face.

  “He suffers from memory loss,” the neighbors whisper.

  First, it’s important to recognize the guy is smiling. He’s happy, if maybe a bit oddly dressed.

  I’m with him. I don’t suffer from memory loss—and those unfortunate mental burps seem to be happening to me with greater regularity these days. I actually enjoy it. I relish the opportunities forgetting gives me. Mental lapses give me a chance to look at things anew every day. And because I started having senior moments in my twenties, I’ve had a fresh outlook on life for close to forever.

  For years I thought it was musician Carlos Santana who said, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” I held onto that because I took it as a positive message. Whether you like Santana’s music or not—and I do—the expression made sense to me because the guy is still genuinely rocking nearly fifty years after Woodstock. He’s been repeating history year in, year out. Was he thus condemned? I don’t think so. He’s been enjoying it immensely, I would argue.

  During that same period, I thought the opening lines of Steppenwolf’s “Born to Be Wild” were, “Kitchen water’s running. Head out on the highway.” I knew I’d certainly head out if I had a leaky faucet driving me crazy.

  But I have learned recently it was Spanish philosopher and essayist George Santayana who commented on forgetting the past and repeating it. And I learned only last year that the opening lines to the Steppenwolf classic were “Get your motor runnin’. Head out on the highway.”

  Oh.

  For me, those were both something close to thirty-year senior moments. That says two things. First, we are all capable of senior moments, no matter how old or young we are. And second, and most important, that it really doesn’t matter, because if something makes sense, you need nothing else to move ahead with confidence, even if others think you’re a few cards short of a deck. Senior moments arrive un-beckoned at any time to anyone, no matter what age we are.

  My advice is to simply roll with them and laugh at them. Embrace them. Surround yourself with friends who inhabit the same planet as you. It’s fun.

  Laugh and move on.

  My older brother had a high school friend who once called him to get our home phone number. He had something important he needed to say, he told my brother over the phone. I once went to pick up a date and rang the doorbell. She wasn’t there. I returned a half hour later and did the same thing again. She still wasn’t there. I tried once more then I gave up. Later she called. How could you miss our date? she asked. I had the right address but the wrong street. End of romance.

  In the past month alone I have:

  Spent close to an hour looking for my glasses when they were resting comfortably on top of my head.

  Poured coffee on my Cheerios.

  Texted a friend to say I had lost my phone, then asked him to call so I could hear the ring and find it.

  Completely blanked on why I had called someone the instant they picked up the phone.

  Told someone a sizzling piece of local gossip then realized she was the person who told me in the first place.

  Forgotten my twenty-year-old niece’s name.

  Drove off with a cup of Cumberland Farms coffee on the roof of my car.

  I don’t beat myself up about all this, though. As the poet Ogden Nash once said, “You are only young once, but you can stay immature indefinitely.”

  A recent study has shown that while the cliché “laughter is the best medicine” might not be totally true, it certainly does help. Humor just might actually improve memory, the study found, by reducing damage caused by the stress hormone cortisol.

  I look at my own shaky memory in a more pedestrian fashion. It allows me to watch reruns and think they are new. It gives me license to tell the same stories repeatedly without embarrassment. I can reread the same book multiple times, and still be surprised by the ending. My friends and acquaintances might come to think of me as a colossal bore, but I’m having the time of my life. As a group of former teammates once had printed on a T-shirt, THE OLDER WE GET, THE BETTER WE WERE.

  And that’s what matters.

  And the nice thing about memory loss is that the chances are we’re all going to be afflicted at some point and in some fashion. It’s an equal opportunity and democratic affliction. All we have to do is just wait. It will happen, and if you are fortunate enough to be among those who are said to “suffer” from memory loss, consider yourself lucky.

  Forgetting makes things real and challenging, and you can have great unexpected excitement without ever leaving home. It makes losing your keys an adventure. It kills time and makes the day go faster. I spent an entire afternoon recently looking for my car keys, which were in the ignition, where I had left them so I would know where they were. I killed a whole evening after dinner a week ago trying to remember the name of the television serious about the French foreign legion starring Buster Crabbe that I enjoyed as a kid. It was The French Foreign Legion. I might have drawn the connection earlier, but then what would I have done for the rest of the night?

  Today, I can remember the lyrics to songs that were playing thirty years ago, even though I can’t remember what I just walked into the kitchen to get.

  You will find in these pages what I hope is a celebration of age and forgetting, of brain freezes and mental cramps and senior moments. We’ve earned them. Here also you will find some inspiration by reading of late-blooming writers like J. R. R. Tolkien and Laura Ingalls Wilder, athletes who went out gracefully and with dignity, ninety-year-old marathoners
, and old geezers who conquered Everest. You’ll find plenty of people who have managed to live past fifty and have not only enjoyed it, but flourished. Many of today’s cultures worship youth. I say that is wrong. Celebrate longevity and all the things that go along with it.

  I once worked with a guy years ago who at the advanced age of about thirty basically stopped doing anything physical. He felt he had reached the peak of his vitality. This was based on his cockeyed theory that we all have only a finite number of heartbeats per lifetime. Doing anything that increased those heartbeats was spending money in the bank, he felt. Walking up a flight of stairs would worry him and have him silently counting the extra pumps he had just spent.

  He was miserable, an old man at thirty. He was missing the point.

  Human life expectancy has increased more in the past fifty years than it did in the previous two hundred thousand years of human existence. In 1950, the average life expectancy was forty-seven; now it is more than seventy.

  Think about this: The human brain has an average weight of less than two pounds or so. It looks like a soppy sponge and some days I think mine works like one. But it contains millions of neurons and trillions of synapses that provide an astounding amount of gifts to us all. The brain could be the most complex thing in the entire universe. At a certain age, mine for example, the brain becomes more like an overflowing sieve. It doesn’t work right. I say, so what? I know I’m not alone. When I talk to my contemporaries, they’re all worrying about the same problems.

  So there might be a few missed connections along the way. In middle age, people’s brains can start to slow down—a process that it is both terrifying and enlightening. Again, so what? It’s not a big deal. Look for the positive side of things. I like enlightenment.

  A recent study found that Google has led to memory loss in far more people, younger folks at that, than had been previously thought. Being able to look something up on the Internet has replaced the need and energy to recall a fact. Just grab your phone and the answer is there. Personally I find this a bit of an overreaction, as if we’re all going to end up like the legless amoeba-like science fiction people predicted because of the use of automobiles.

  I predict that the Internet and Google will have no more to do with memory loss than the legless globular people many thought would be inertly ruling the Earth by now.

  You don’t need Google. You just need to be patient and wait. It will come.

  And you certainly will not be alone, as you will see throughout this book. There’s Jimmy Carter forgetting top secret nuclear launch codes in a suit he had sent to the dry cleaners. There’s Albert Einstein forgetting where he lived and George W. Bush, the walking Presidential senior moment.

  Live well. Be honest. Roll with the punches. Don’t take yourself too seriously.

  As Mark Twain once said, “If you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember anything.”

  I’ll vote for that.

  Crime Does Not Pay, but Being a Bonehead Makes It More Interesting

  People who need money seem to be overtaken by senior moments more than others, regardless of age. There is just something about the thought of a few quick bucks that puts the brain into idle and keeps it there. Sometimes it’s not just the money, though. It also seems that being around law enforcement officials just brings out strong tendencies to do incredibly stupid things.

  They’ll Be There Soon

  When a forty-year-old woman locked herself out of her Pittsburgh home, she sought help from the authorities.

  First, she set her house on fire. Then she called 911, expecting the fire department to put out the fire and unlock her door. As planned, the fire department responded, but so did the police, who charged her with reckless endangerment.

  Question: How many retirees does it take to change a light bulb?

  Answer: Only one, but it might take all day.

  Always Count Your Change

  A man walked into a Louisiana convenience store, placed a $20 bill on the counter and asked for change. When the clerk opened the cash drawer, the man pulled a gun and asked for all the cash in the register. The clerk immediately complied, and the robber grabbed the cash and rushed out of the store. He left his $20 bill on the counter. Total amount of cash the intrepid robber got away with? $15.

  “I always wanted to be somebody. I see now that I should have been more specific.”

  —Lily Tomlin

  Step One: Choose the Right Place to Rob

  A Washington state man chose a gun shop for his inaugural armed robbery, beginning the first of series of seriously bad decisions. It would also be his last. The shop was crowded with customers and Washington is a state that allows concealed carrying of firearms. On his way into the shop, the would-be armed robber actually had to step around a police car parked in front, and the officer was inside having coffee with the owner. Our hero walked in, announced a hold up and fired a few wild shots before the police officer, the owner of the shop, and several customers returned fire. They did not miss.

  Riding on a Pony

  A trail of macaroni salad led police investigators in upstate New York to three suspected burglars.

  Deputies near Rochester responded to a burglary at a local restaurant early one morning, after the owners reported their surveillance system and cash register were missing. The investigation led police to a hiking and biking path, where they found cash register parts, surveillance system parts, rubber gloves, loose change and “a steady trail of macaroni salad,” according to a news release issued by the office.

  “It was later discovered that the suspects stole a large bowl of macaroni salad, which they took turns eating, along their escape route,” the statement read.

  Nice If It Works

  An eighty-six-year-old Japanese woman who allegedly carried on cashing her parents’ pension for half a century after they died was arrested recently in Japan.

  Mitsue Suzuki is believed to have collected more than 50 million yen over the last five decades for her parents, who both died in the 1960s.

  “These days about half the stuff in my shopping cart says, ‘For fast relief …’”

  —Anonymous

  Smart Ass

  Two young businessmen in Florida were sitting down for a break in their soon-to-be new store in the shopping mall. As yet, the store’s merchandise wasn’t in—only a few shelves and display racks were set up.

  One said to the other, “I’ll bet that any minute now some senior is going to walk by, put his face to the window, and ask what we’re selling.”

  Sure enough, just a moment later, a curious senior gentleman walked up to the window, looked around intensely, and rapped on the glass.

  Then in a loud voice he asked, “What are you selling here?”

  One of the men replied sarcastically, “We’re selling ass holes.”

  Without skipping a beat, the old timer said, “You must be doing well. Only two left.”

  “I am so old that when I was young the Dead Sea was only sick.”

  —George Burns

  A Billion Here, A Billion There

  A Florida man last year walked into the Jacksonville Bank of America and attempted to cash a check for $368,000,000,000.00.

  Armed with his identification and fully expecting the check to be cashed, Waters was befuddled when he learned that the blank check that he bought from a homeless man called Tito was unusable.

  When the tellers became suspicious, Waters explained that a homeless man by the name of Tito Watts had sold him the blank US Bank of Idaho check (which was issued in the nineties) for $100.

  Tito told the man he can go ahead and cash the check for whatever amount his heart desires.

  “Tito said the check was good for any amount I wanted to write it for. So blame Tito, not me. I’m as innocent as a schoolgirl,” he told tellers.

  Not wanting to go small and write a check for a few measly hundreds, thousands or millions—the man had his eyes set on becoming an instant billionaire. H
e even planned on opening a one-of-a-kind Italian restaurant with his imaginary billions.

  So he made the check out to “cash” and headed to the bank with high hopes.

  “It’s always been my dream to own the best Italian restaurant on the earth,” he later told the police.

  But Really …

  After fifteen months on the lam and with his conscience weighing on him, a Swedish murder suspect decided to turn himself in to police officers. When he arrived at the police station shortly after 6 p.m., cops told him to go away—they were closed for the day. “Closed?” he shouted back at the police. “I’m suspected of murder and am a wanted man. You guys really want to get a hold of me.” Obviously not as badly as he’d thought, because officers directed him to colleagues at another police station, who, they assured him, would be happy to arrest him.

  “I was taught to respect my elders, but it keeps getting harder to find one.”

  —Anonymous

  Vote Early and Often

  During one recent election a casino worker in Las Vegas was irked that people were not taking voter fraud more seriously. So she set out to prove that it was a real problem.

  She was caught attempting to vote twice and arrested on charges of voter fraud.

  “When you are younger you get blamed for crimes you never committed and when you’re older you begin to get credit for virtues you never possessed. It evens itself out.”

  —Casey Stengel

  Gun and Airports

  A passenger who tried to bring a loaded gun onto a plane in Chicago had a great excuse. A wonderful try, but it didn’t help.

  He said he simply forgot he was packing heat.

  The man was stopped by security and arrested at Chicago’s Midway International Airport when they spotted a .38 caliber revolver, loaded with four live rounds, in the man’s bag. Transportation Security Administration (TSA) agents noticed the gun’s outline when his bag went through the X-ray machine. The twenty-three-year-old told TSA agents that he forgot the gun was in his bag.