Happy tears welling in my aged eyes. I thought I was the only one…
Bippy dear Bippy, you’re very special to all of us. But not that special. If you’ve done it we’ve done it. And vice versa. I find that comforting.
Me too
There was that time I took a nap after work and woke up at 7:30. Crap, I overslept…I gotta get to work! I get to work and wonder why I’m the only one at the office. And, I got really scared because it was getting darker outside, not lighter. Did I miss the news about the sun flaming out or something. Nope, I just confused AM with PM. I didn’t oversleep at all.
Then there was the time I got to work and during my first patient encounter I realized I was wearing slippers. They weren’t bunny-slippers, but almost as silly looking.
Then there was the time I was shopping at Publix and noticed someone looking at me funny. Then I thought, hey, I don’t remember putting my pants on this morning…and why do my legs feel so breezy? I was afraid to look down. If I went commando and wasn’t wearing pants, I’m gonna be in a heap of trouble! Thankfully I was wearing shorts.
I’ve had other senior moments, but they’re too embarrassing to talk about.
To make sure I didn’t forget, I put a sign at the bottom of my computer monitor: …Pharmacy. Flu Shot. Monday 9-5:30
Naturally I just thought of it just now. [This pharmacy won’t have flu shots again for a few weeks]
In the future I must make bigger signs…
Man, having a calendar on my phone that’ll beep at me has saved my sanity. Before that, I forgot everything…
Now, I’ll hear that chime, look at my phone, and think “Flu shot? Really? Huh, I don’t even remember putting this in here… thanks, Yesterday Self!”
I honestly had no idea there was such a thing as prescription toothpaste.
Won’t go all TMI on y’all, but I made a titanically dumb boo-boo at work yesterday, and I could almost cry. I just didn’t notice something, right there in front of my face, and reported it as wrong to my supervisor. He sent me a very considerate memo pointing out what I had overlooked. Didn’t rub my face in it. (I have a great boss.) But, sheesh. I’m old, but not so old as to be THAT stupid!
Oh, Trinopus, we all know how you’re feeling.
I mean, I should tell you that it’s no big deal, but to be honest, one of the reasons I retired earlier than planned was to get out before I spaced out and made a big mistake.
With Senior Moments, ADHD and a family full of Alzheimer’s, the phrase “accident waiting to happen” kept running through my head.
My dad and my step-mom both kept driving until they had accidents and the state took away their licenses. I’m planning not to follow that example!
I’ve had several episodes in which I’ve done similar things. It took me a while, but I finally figured out what’s happening in that type of situation.
I try to remember to PAY ATTENTION to where I’m putting things now. I figured out that it’s a combination distraction/memory issue. If I’m distracted in any way–not consciously paying attention to what I’m doing–then my brain doesn’t realize that the act of putting something down is important, and therefore no memory will be formed. It’s only when I give full attention to where I’m putting something that I remember where I put it.
This. IMO It doesn’t have as much to do with “senior” as it has to do with “21st Century”. Most of us are thinking about anything and everything except what we’re actually doing. The instant the task at hand has a slight gap in salience, we mentally flit off to something wholly unrelated. That’s dumb.
Today while making the coffee I was thinking about a txt conversation from last night and what I needed to do about that today. While pouring the coffee I was thinking about a quick online task for work that needed to happen in the next half-hour or so, and I wanted to create a mental “don’t forget” about that. For something to be done as soon as the coffee was poured and I’d walked all the long way over to my PC in another room.
Etc., etc., etc. All day long.
It happens I didn’t screw up the making or the serving of the coffee … today. Though that does happen often.
The practitioners of Zen and other meditative traditions talk about “being in the moment”. It roughly means thinking about what you are physically doing, and only what you are physically doing.
All of us middle-aged+ folks did that a lot more of that in 1970 than we do today. And IMO a lot of what we’re blaming on age should properly be laid at the feet of constant distraction, either outside-imposed, or more often, self-imposed.
My corrective, learned partially at work, is to mentally talk to myself about what I’m physically doing. By describing the steps to assembling the coffee as I do them, I’m crowding out the incessant need to mentally dialog about something, anything, else.
Try it, it works. And for those who think that’ll ruin your productivity, you’re wrong. Hosts of studies of so-called “multi-tasking” show it doesn’t really work. We fool ourselves that it does.
I say to myself “this is a very clever and logical place to put this item. A month from now, am I going to search for this item in the clever and logical place, or the inconvenient and familiar place I’ve kept it for the last 9 years?”
Inconvenient and familiar is always better. When I can’t find something, I will keep going back to the familiar place where it’s supposed to be, as if it’s going to magically appear.
Usually with me it’s laziness. I’ll need to put my car keys down while working in the garage, for example, but instead of walking into the house and putting my keys where they are supposed to go, I might place them on a random shelf in the garage (or worse, dropped into a shoe on the garage shoe rack). After all, how could one forget placing keys on a shelf?
Of course, I frequently don’t remember doing this until after I’ve been looking for my keys for an hour inside the house.
If I should forget to bring my ticket to Burning Man I’m screwed because it is a four day round trip to home and back and they will not let you in without one. Therefore, when I start to load the truck a day or so before departure, the very first thing I do is take the ticket out of the drawer in the dresser where it’s been since June, walk out with it in-hand, staring at it the entire time, place it in the console of the truck, then stare at it for a good thirty seconds before closing the lid on the console.
This is because at least twice on the trip up I will be, “OMG! I’ve forgotten the ticket!” The image of it sitting in the console will float into my mind, and I don’t even have to look into the console to reassure myself.
I do similar stuff before leaving on vacation. (Remember those?)
I say to myself, “What is the minimum I need to go that is not [easily] replaceable?” Usually it’s:
- Passport
- Wallet
- Cell phone (mainly because this includes all electronic tickets, itineraries, schedules, etc.)
If it’s a scuba diving trip or a ski trip, it gets much more involved, but the above is the bare minimum.
A trick I learned from my grandma when following a recipe: always say aloud what you’re putting into the bowl as you do it. Including the count as well: “one cup flour”, “two cups flour”, etc. Speaking while acting improves remembrance.
I always say I’m getting old at the right time:
By the time my hearing’s bad enough, I’ll get Bluetooth hearing aids that can connect to the TV (and the EQ can be adjusted on the fly with an app).
And, here’s the more crucial one: as my reactions slow down, I’ll have a car that’ll beep at me (or stop me) when I stray from my lane or bump into something.
And when I get worse, there’ll be self-driving cars (or if I don’t trust them, there’ll always be Uber).
Or take a pic!
I tell you, I’m glad I’m getting old with a Smartphone. I set reminders to chime a half hour before an event, and I take photos of absolutely anything (and I literally think “Tomorrow Me is going to see this and know where Today Me put this. Hope he appreciates this!”)
[quote=“DesertDog, post:95, topic:919415, full:true”]
I bet you still check anyway…