THEREFORE I AM: 39 is (almost) too early for senility

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June 1, 2009

By David Spates / davespates@tds.net The Crossville Chronicle Mon Jun 01, 2009, 03:59 PM CDT

If you’re involved in a hit-and-run accident, don’t ask me what I saw. I have no idea. I’d be a terrible witness. Just ask my neighbor. Troy can’t trim his bushes because of my lousy memory. Don’t believe it? Ask my brother-in-law, Doug. My hedge trimmer is in his garage.

The older I get the more it becomes painfully apparent that I can’t keep up with all of the memories I have accumulated over the years. Think of your brain as a computer’s hard drive. During the course of a computer’s operational lifetime, you, the user, add a wide assortment of spreadsheets, songs, movies, word processing documents, games, applications, and a downloaded video of Bob Saget kissing Marlon Brando on the forehead that you inexplicably are saving. The longer you keep your computer, the more files you add. Eventually, the hard drive fills up.

I am by no means claiming that I’ve filled up my mental memory, but I know for sure that I don’t remember things as well as I used to. Unfortunately, unlike a computer, I can’t add an external hard drive by plugging a USB cable in my ear.

Yesterday my friend and next-door neighbor, Troy, asked me if he could borrow my electric hedge trimmer. I knew for certain that Doug, my brother-in-law, had recently borrowed it to do some landscape trimming of his own, but I was absolutely, positively, 400-percent certain that Doug had returned it and that it was now tucked away in my garage. I remember Doug coming over with the trimmer and handing it to me.

However, I searched my garage and came up empty-handed — no trimmer. I told Troy to give me a few minutes because I knew the trimmer was in the garage and that I distinctly remember Doug giving it back to me. It had to be in there — somewhere. To me, the admission that I kept a messy, disorganized garage was much more likely than facing the reality that I had dreamed up a trimmer-returning incident that never, ever occurred.

After 20 minutes or so of searching, sweating and cursing, I broke down and decided to ask Doug if he did indeed return the trimmer. Even as I was dialing, I was still quite certain that, yes, Doug had returned it and I had since misplaced it. Maybe there was a little doubt, but I was still pretty certain.

I reached Doug.

The trimmer was still in his garage.

He hasn’t returned it yet.

It was at that very moment that I felt as old as I have ever felt in my entire life. (Yes, technically, every moment in the present tense is when you are as “old” as you have ever been, but I’m talking about a state of being, not merely a chronological status.)

There are other moments in life when everyone feels “old” — the first time someone younger than you calls you “sir” or “ma’am;” the first time the cashier doesn’t bother asking you for your ID when you buy a six-pack; when you look at the list of top 10 songs and you don’t recognize a single one. Those are all “old” moments, but manufacturing fake memories — that’s a new one for me.

Maybe it’s because I’m about to turn 39, just a step away from the big 4-Oh, but I’ve started to notice other “old” moments recently. I have a vision insurance plan in which I’m entitled to receive a new pair of glasses every year. Last year’s pair is just fine, so I could have used this year’s allowance to get a pair of ultra-cool sunglasses, but instead I decided to get a pair of the exact same glasses I already have. Why? Now I can keep one pair in the house and one pair in the car. That way, I won’t have to search for my glasses as frequently — or so my aged logic thought. I’ll always know where at least one pair is. Brilliant!

Yes, I know that not losing my glasses in the first place would be even more brilliant, but I don’t think that’s going to happen.

And so, your honor, I doubt I’d make a reliable witness anytime soon. Maybe I can upgrade my cranial hard drive or something, but for now I’d be no good on the witness stand. Your honor, if you had asked me to swear on a big stack of Bibles that Doug had returned my hedge trimmer, I would have done it without hesitation. Now that I’ve searched my garage and contacted my brother-in-law, I’d be facing perjury charges. You wouldn’t throw an old geezer like me in the hoosegow, would you?

David Spates is a Knoxville resident and Crossville Chronicle contributor whose column is published each Tuesday. He can be reached at davespates@tds.net.

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