TIME GOES BY | Let Me Tell You About Getting Old

Image by ebby via Flickrby Ronni Bennett

As we often say, Bette Davis knew whereof she spoke when she said, “Old age ain't for sissies.” She had the throw pillow with that original saying made when, in a 13-month period, she went through a double mastectomy, a stroke and a broken collarbone.

We all hope we won't face any of the possible serious diseases and conditions the accumulation of years might inflict upon us – and certainly not so many in such a short space of time as hit that brave woman. But there are plenty of less debilitating – and sometimes demeaning - afflictions we are required to navigate and make the best of. To name a few:

• Being put out to pasture from the workforce before we intended
• Crossing that divide from mid-age to invisibility
• Mysterious aches and pains with no apparent cause or remedy
• Falling asleep during a movie no matter how good it is
• Being seated at a table near the rest room even when the restaurant is all but empty
• Being referred to as “dearie” by way too many young people
• Listening to a mean-spirited former senator compare elders to cows

None of what you've just read matters. It is all just a delaying action before getting to this one:

• Repeated embarrassment due to short-term memory problems

On Monday, I admitted to being embarrassed about how long it had taken me to update the Elderbloggers List. That lapse had nothing to do with memory and everything to do with laziness.

But now I must cop to a more embarrassing shortcoming. I put a great deal of effort into updating that list – it's not something one would forget, or so I thought.

I spent most of a day cleaning the list of abandoned blogs, adding new ones alphabetically and coding it all into html. Then I wrote the accompanying story for Monday and set it to post automatically at 5:30AM.

I carefully saved the new html document to my temporary file, where I keep things I will need in the near future, ready to copy and paste onto its page on Monday morning so that you, dear readers, would have that new list ready to use with the announcement of it.

Then, because I know my short-term memory is non-existent, I wrote a note to myself – in red, block letters on my Monday to-do list – to post that new List first thing.

Here's what I now recall about Monday morning: brushed my teeth, turned on the computer, fed the cat, started the electric tea kettle, checked email, made the coffee, READ THE TO-DO LIST – and got on with the day. A little later, in a rare fit of computer housekeeping, I deleted all the files in my temporary file.

Throughout the day, I neatly checked off everything on the to-do list WITHOUT EVER AGAIN SEEING THE BIG RED NOTE at the top of the page. Somehow, my eyes went right past it. For the rest of the week, I was happy in my ignorance, and pleased with myself that I'd gotten that list so neat and tidy.

That is, until yesterday when I needed to track down a certain elderblog. I went to that shiny, new list online and was horrified to see, instead, all those abandoned blogs and none of the new ones.

Did you catch my other memory mistake three paragraphs up? Yes? No? Here it is in its utter stupidity: the new list had been in the now-deleted temporary file.

Ooph - you know that feeling when something has gone terribly wrong and there is nothing you can do about it? And then you realize, too, it's all your own fault?

Look at it and weep for me; all that list work now needs to be repeated.

So not only has my short-term memory turned to crap – I already knew that – but now I must think up a new way to remind myself of important things that is better than the big, fat, red notes I've used for decades.

It ain't easy getting old.

TIME GOES BY | Let Me Tell You About Getting Old

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