by Ralph Maltese | Mar 26, 2017 | Uncategorized
Cold Storage
My father and I were camping on a remote pond, one with ice-blue water, and I had just unpacked a six pack of beer.
I looked over at my dad putting together his spinning rod. “How are we going to keep this beer cold?”
“Who says it has to be cold?” My father served in the Pacific in World War II, an area where I imagine a cold beer was not the norm.
“I am not a big fan of warm beer.” I pouted.
“So, Idgit (my father’s usual appellation for me when, in his opinion, I flashed my ignorance), think!”
I thought. Then I sought and found the inlet stream to the pond and stashed the six pack in the middle of the bubbling brook that showed my breath when I leaned down next to it, it was so so cold. Problem solved.
That is part of the fun of living in the outdoors, making do without all the amenities of suburban home life. But sometimes the “conveniences” of suburban home life provide challenges that are greater than trying to find a location to chill your beer.
Consider that household item, the refrigerator. The earliest one I remember was the rather short, white Kelvin refrigerator that stood guard in a corner of our Bronx apartment kitchen. There was a round cylinder on top which whirred at some moments. The storage was small by today’s standards, but my mother managed to fill every nook and cranny.
Polley once shared with me the premise of an article which postulated that people are more stressed out in our society because of the multiple decisions we have to make in everyday life. The first cavepeople killed a goat—they ate goat. We enter a fast food chain and the decision-making process begins with forty options of hamburger and sides. Buying a refrigerator runs the same stressful risks.
Our first refrigerator as a married couple in a small apartment had three shelves, two ice trays, and a freezer that could barely accommodate a filet of flounder. My mother was appalled, especially when she visited with two hundred pounds of roasts, chickens, sirloins, pork loins, and gallons of gravy (tomato sauce for you non-Italians). The problem was eased slightly in winter when we used the small porch of the apartment to store my mother’s supply train. In warmer weather we had to do a great deal of eating.
When Polley and I moved to our suburban home, a refrigerator was, of course, on our appliance list. My father-in-law wisely cautioned us to not purchase a fridge with an ice maker. “One more damn thing to break!” Our budget allowed us to buy a five shelf refrigerator with a freezer on top, the Polar Ice 5400. It served us well for a number of years until it suffered from Freon blockages or bad circulation and worked only sporadically. So we parked our Polar Ice 5400 in the garage to serve as our second cold storage device.
We did our research and settled on an Arctic Explorer 9000, and oh what decisions we had to make. Door device which dispensed water, crushed ice or ice cubes or four rather mundane ice cube trays, color choice: ivory white, silver gray, seaweed olive, six or eight shelves, freezer top or bottom, left hand or right hand door, vegetable keeper, extra bright refrigerator light, multiple freezer settings—cold, colder, coldest, etc.
Our budget and my father-in-law’s advice made the decision—the no frills seaweed olive Arctic Explorer 9000. And the seaweed olive Arctic Explorer served us well for several decades, but even though my family dwindled to just Polley and me as the kids went off to get learned, it seemed our refrigerator requirements expanded. For one thing, the door on the seaweed olive Arctic Explorer 9000 was on the wrong side and frequently collided with an open oven door. The freezer was on top, and consequently most of the things we wanted to obtain were in the refrigerator proper which meant more stooping over to get the Genoa salami. So we did our research again and headed to the appliance store while the Arctic Explorer 9000 found a new home in the garage replacing the Polar Ice 5400 which retired to a junkyard pasture. Emptying the Arctic Explorer was an adventure unto itself. We discovered foodstuffs that had fallen into inventory oblivion.
The freezer had freezer bags of meat which were unidentifiable, the labels unreadable, and unless the label read “Use before the end of this century” the contents were disposed of. So was the container of macaroni with a green crust which I hoped was pesto sauce, but I knew better, and I was unwilling to absorb a hit of penicillin….so into the trash it went. As did the mysterious inhabitants of Polly-O containers and remnants of exotic cheeses whose expiration dates were in previous centuries. The garbage can was ultimately filled with leftovers that in days/months/years past were placed in the refrigerator with promises of future usage. Alas, the price of short memories.
If emptying the old refrigerator was a challenge, purchasing the new one presented a host of decisions. In the store the wide and tall refrigerators dominated the appliance landscape. We debated color—whalebone white, martini olive, Lone Ranger silver. We told the salesman that so many modern fridges seemed to be silver. We were corrected. “The up and coming trend in refrigerator color is white.” [this blog prides itself on keeping subscribers hip to the modern trends in appliance coloring] Again, heeding my father-in-law’s wisdom we chose not to purchase the updated fridge door which dispensed water, shaved ice, ice cubes, and refreshing Mai Tais (an optional feature was a dispenser of garnish: gardenia and umbrella.)
We were shown the newest model, an Admiral Perry Sled Dog 4000. The Admiral Perry Sled Dog 4000 had enough room inside to fit a sixties Volkswagen. Its shelves were interchangeable just in case we decided the Cranberry juice belonged on the left side of the fridge and the Tiramisu Greek Yogurt belonged on the right side of the Admiral Perry Sled Dog 4000. There are compartments: one for keeping vegetables fresh and crisp (could I put my potato chips there?); a fruit compartment (pears and apples and kumquats apparently do not like to rub stems with celery, carrots, and turnips); a Glide and Serve drawer (so would my salami and mustard sandwich emerge fully concocted from this drawer?). The freezer of the Admiral Perry Sled Dog 4000 has two huge compartments including a sliding drawer for small items like that leftover barbequed hot dog. And the refrigerator light, when set on the highest setting, could serve as a beacon for the entire Eastern seaboard.
The Admiral Perry Sled Dog 4000 was entered by two massive doors, probably inspired by a scene in The Lord of the Rings, and, in order to open them, we had to increase our stretching repetitions for our biceps at the gym. There were thermostats for different sections of the Admiral Perry Sled Dog 4000, total control over the temperature of every radish and half-eaten chicken leg. The manual for the Admiral Perry Sled Dog 4000 was heavier than the instructions for the Apollo Missions, and I would need to spend several decades studying and mastering the operations of this behemoth of cold storage.
The salesperson at the appliance store assured us that the Admiral Perry Sled Dog 4000 was the pinnacle of refrigeration evolution. I guess this meant that over time the bugs were weeded out from Admiral Perry Sled Dog models 1 through 3,999. We believed him.
Now the Admiral Perry Sled Dog 4000 looms like a sentinel over our kitchen vista. Every time I look up from my coffee cup and see it in all its immenseness, I am reminded of the Monolith in the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey. On its first day in our abode, we could not imagine filling the Admiral Perry Sled Dog 4000 with foodstuffs. After the first week we were pushing past bottles of fruit juices and cans of gravy and jars of items attempting to find the mustard.
The Admiral Perry Sled Dog 4000 seems content doing its job minute after minute, second after second. Occasionally when we are sitting in our family room reading or watching television, the Admiral Perry Sled Dog 4000 will erupt into a belching of mechanical whirring sounds that would lead us to wonder if a 747 Passenger Jet mistakenly landed on our lawn. At first we thought it was the fridge’s ice maker until we realized…..we had not chosen that option. The machine is probably just recycling through its four million sensors and making certain that every leaf of lettuce is the right temperature.
The sounds that the Admiral Perry Sled Dog 4000 make are often annoying and always fearful. Personally I prefer the sounds of a chilling, babbling brook rushing over my beer, but it is the price we pay for having the latest evolutionary device in cold storage.
by Ralph Maltese | Mar 19, 2017 | Uncategorized
Plan On It
I read this online the other day: “Cleveland police say an 18-year-old serial carjacker was arrested after his accomplice couldn’t drive a stick shift — even with some coaching from the victim.” This was a “serial carjacker,” an experienced hand at such nefarious activities, I suppose. I also suppose that nowhere in his crime plan was the possibility that the chosen car would be a stick shift. I also suppose that there was no “plan.” Scientists have supported what I suspected while teaching high school for nearly four decades and raising four children. Most young people do not like to plan. Planning is a learned activity. Something about the “area within the mid-dorsolateral frontal cortex located in the frontal lobe has been implicated as playing an intrinsic role in both cognitive planning and associated executive traits such as working memory.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planning Apparently this part of the brain is not fully developed in adolescents. I believe it. Friday nights, my own kids decide they want to “do something” with their high school friends. Of course I can only hear one side of the phone conversation, but, in those days it was easy to fill in the blanks, sort of like those old Mad Lib games.
“Hi, Jean, whatcha doing tonight?”…..
“Yeah, I was thinking of going to the movies, too. We should do something.”….
“I’ll call Matt and see if he wants to go. He can drive.”
An hour later.
“Matt can’t drive. He’s grounded. But Mary can.”….
“Which movie?”….
“Saw that one. How about that vampire flick? I’ll call Mary and see if she’s seen it.”
An hour later.
“Mary saw the vampire movie. She wants her sister and boyfriend to join us.”….
“Yeah, too late for the movies. Mary’s sister doesn’t like movies anyway.”…
“So what do you wanna do? Go bowling?”….
“Oh. Why doesn’t Mary’s boyfriend like bowling?”….
“Well, call Mary and see what she wants to do.”
Thirty minutes later.
“Why don’t you all come over here and we’ll watch some stupid thing on tv? My parents will make popcorn.”
And that was fine with us. Of all the panoramic possibilities of what they could be doing, sitting in our family room munching popcorn and complaining about how stupid the world is was certainly an acceptable, even cherished, choice. Come to think of it, when we gather with friends now, we do the same thing, only with alcohol present.
The high school cinema course I taught included a project for making a documentary–student choice of what to make a documentary about. I required a storyboard and shooting script….a plan. I showed them Alfred Hitchcock’s detailed storyboard for the bi-plane scene in North by Northwest. Didn’t matter. I still got a great deal of pushback.
“Aw, Mr. Maltese, can’t we just take the camera and shoot the documentary?!!! We know what we want to do!” Some groups would turn in a sloppy, careless script (which I evaluated as part of their grades), and I would give them a time limit to actually shoot the film. I watched as, invariably, they would spend the allotted time arguing over camera angles and movement. “Time’s up gang.”
“Aw, Mr. Maltese, we didn’t have time. We wanted it to be like the Blair Witch Project. You see that movie? They just went out and shot the movie.”
Yes, I had seen the Blair Witch Project. The movie looked like a camera was given to some young people who, planless, went out to shoot a movie. It was no Hitchcock.
I am probably being unfair in depicting only young people as non-planners. John Cassavetes, the actor, commented, “I’m a great believer in spontaneity because I think planning is the most destructive thing in the world.” Mr. Cassavetes was nominated for three Oscars. Maybe if he had planned a little….Just saying. And whole bodies of adults seem to have difficulty planning. For eight years one party railed against a particular health care plan, and, in those eight years, the alternative plan they came up with does not demonstrate careful planning…just saying.
Apparently differently cultures approach planning and execution differently. The Japanese will spend an incredible amount of time planning, but then run through the project staying on schedule and not deviating from the plan. Americans plan less and, during the execution of the project, are more inclined to deviate from the plan and explore possibilities. These two tactics apparently cause some consternation when both cultures collaborate.
People have debated the merits of planning for ages. Here are some thoughts on the topic:
- You can do irrefutably impossible things with the right amount of planning and support from intelligent and hardworking people and pizza. Scott M. Gimple
- Without leaps of imagination, or dreaming, we lose the excitement of possibilities. Dreaming, after all, is a form of planning. Gloria Steinem
- In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable. Dwight D. Eisenhower
- Planning to write is not writing. Outlining, researching, talking to people about what you’re doing, none of that is writing. Writing is writing. E. L. Doctorow
- Planning is bringing the future into the present so that you can do something about it now. Alan Lakein
https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/keywords/planning.html
I liked the last quote by Mr. Lakein, but then I read another quote by him. “People don’t plan to fail. They fail to plan.” With all due respect to Mr. Lakein, I think this witticism does not hold water. Of course people do not plan to fail. Who does? Napoleon: “Okay, men, we are going to invade Russia and try to take Moscow at the worst time of year. Most of you will die on the retreat home. We won’t take Moscow. Ready? Get your gear. Merde.” Or Custer: “We’re going to attack the village with over three thousand warriors who will be hopping mad. Most of us, perhaps all of us, will be wiped out. That’s the plan. Bugler, blow the charge command. Giddyap!” Even King Arthur in Monty Python and the Holy Grail did not plan to fail with the ruse of the Trojan Rabbit. Sir Bevedere simply forgot an important element of the strategy. “Well, now, uh, Lancelot, Galahad and I wait until nightfall and then leap out of the rabbit taking the French by surprise. Not only by surprise but totally unarmed!”
In order to teach the way I taught, intense planning was necessary. Despite the summers and weekends spent developing learning units, I had to learn to adapt and adjust on the fly. One of my favorite maxims which I totally embrace, is the one by Allen Saunders: “Life is what happens to us while we are making other plans.” I do not have the space to enumerate the number of times I thought I was in control, planning like crazy, only to have nature/life intervene and cause me to rethink and redirect my efforts. My class is humming along, according to plan, when the monthly fire drill goes off and we spend the next ten minutes outside standing in the snow. While the students are flapping their arms trying to stay warm, I am re-planning and adjusting on the fly. Unexpectedness happens in our daily lives as well. We have prepared a grocery list to shop in our favorite supermarket. Items on the list are arranged by the order of the aisles they will be found in. The supermarket doors swing open electronically, and we confidently march in only to realize that the store has rearranged the aisles. Cereals are now in what was the soup aisle, and dill pickles now reside in the cat food section. Talk about adjusting on the fly! Times like these test our flexibility and adaptiveness to change.
Ultimately the difficulty with planning and plans is that human beings are usually the ones executing them. That truth comes with a vast collection of complex factors. As one of my favorite soothsayers observed, “If you don’t know where you are going,
you’ll end up someplace else.” Yogi Berra
by Ralph Maltese | Mar 12, 2017 | Uncategorized
It’s Taxing
It is that time of year again. Polley and I gather scraps of paper, unopened envelopes with documents inside, and receipts from a variety of health care providers. Manila packages crammed with papers in our laps, we drive the slow, apprehensive-filled car ride to our tax accountant. It is a pilgrimage that is as old as time…or as least as old as civilizations that realized that some way had to be devised to pay for roads, water, and armies. Joseph and Mary were in Bethlehem for the census which was, in part, for the collection of you-know-what.
The Romans taxed their populace 1% (in times of war as high as 3%), but, as the Republic grew and expanded its influence, Rome taxed only its provinces. To perform this odious duty, it hired “tax farmers” known as Publicani, rather like an ancient IRS. Shockingly, the Publicani became notorious for graft and corruption, and Rome had to resume its own tax collection.
Governments have figured out extraordinary ways to finance their functions.
To wit:
- “Pecunia non olet or Money doesn’t stink!is a Latin saying. During the 1st century AD, Roman emperor Vaspasian placed a tax on urine. The buyer(s) of the urine paid the tax. The urine from public urinals was sold as an essential ingredient for several chemical processes e.g. it was used in tanning (not exactly sure how), and also by launderers as a source of ammonia to clean and whiten woolen togas etc.
- During the Middle Ages, European governments placed a tax on soap. It remained in effect for a very long time.[perhaps explaining the need for perfume to cover the body odor] Great Britain didn’t repeal its soap tax until 1835.
- In 1705, Russian Emperor Peter the Great placed a tax on beards, hoping to force men to adopt the clean-shaven look that was common in Western Europe.
- In 1696, England implemented a window tax, taxing houses based on the number of windows they had. That led to many houses having very few windows in order to avoid paying the tax. Eventually this became a health problem and ultimately led to the tax’s repeal in 1851.
- In 1795, England put a tax on the aromatic powders that men and women put on their wigs. This led to a dramatic decline in the popularity of wigs….[Phil Spector obviously does not mind a little wig tax]
Closer to home and in time:
- New York City places a special tax on prepared foods, so sliced bagels are taxed once as food and again as prepared food, thus creating a sliced bagel tax.
- Pennsylvania has a tax on coin-operated vacuum machines at gas stations.
- Pittsburgh has a 5% amusement tax on anything that offers entertainment or allows people to engage in entertainment. [does that include blogs? Spoil sports!!!]
- States like Iowa, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey exempt pumpkins from a sales tax but only if they will be eaten and not carved.
- In 2005, Tennessee began requiring drug dealers to anonymously pay taxes on any illegal substances they sold.[“I was caught and sent to prison for selling drugs, but at least I paid my taxes…”]
- In New Mexico, people over 100 years old are tax-exempt, but only if they are not dependents. [“Mom, dad, we are moving to New Mexico. You can come, too, but…”]
- In Tennessee, there is a tax on all litigation. The amount varies case-by-case but it can be as low as $1 for a parking violation case. The tax tends to discourage frivolous lawsuits.
- In Minnesota, there is a special tax on fur.[fur as clothing or fur on people? I knew a kid in gym class we all called “Sasquatch.”]
- In 2014, the hit Netflix show, House of Cards, halted filming in the State of Maryland as film tax credits were expected to run out. The show received $11.6 million for its first season and $15 million for its second season. Filming resumed in June 2014. The production team placed House of Cards on hold while waiting for the outcome of two separate bills in the Maryland Legislature. According to the Maryland Film Industry Coalition, film production in the state has a “$400 million impact” on the economy.
- In Wisconsin, cloth diapers are not subject to sales tax, but disposable diapers are.
- In Texas, cowboy boots are exempt from the sales tax, but hiking boots are not.[ yippee kai o kai ay]
- In Ohio, a corpse in a mortuary gets makeup applied on it without getting taxed, but a living person is taxed for the makeup that gets applied in a beauty salon.[I guess the IRS calculates it is not as difficult getting money from a live person than it is a corpse.]
https://www.efile.com/unusual-strange-funny-taxes-throughout-the-world-and-history/
As our car pulls into our accountant’s parking lot, I bemoan the fact that I cannot take advantage of any of the above deductions (except for the non-tax on corpse makeup—I am a sensible man). As a relatively young man, teacher, father of four with a home mortgage, I had many more deductions. I could complete my own tax form. Then things got complicated. Our children attended college, and figuring out the tax code became more problematic for me. So, based on several recommendations, we hired our current accountant. One day in April, while I watched him pecking away on three keyboards in front of what seemed like twenty computer monitors, and rifling through our piles of crumpled receipts from pharmacies and home improvements like Sinks Are Us, I confessed that as an English major I was embarrassed that I could not interpret or even read the tax filing. After all, as a college student I read engineering texts that would have bored and put to sleep a raging bull in heat and on amphetamines. He turned in his swivel chair and said, “The tax codes are not designed for you to understand.” We like our accountant.
Many years ago I watched a representative from the IRS being interviewed on a talk show. Steely faced and fitting the stereotypical cold image of an IRS agent, he freely admitted that it was easier to intimidate the “average Joe” for a few hundred bucks than to go after major corporations who owed millions in taxes. “Companies like GM can afford more lawyers than the Federal government can,” explained the agent. “So we focus on John Q.” Oh.
And I really can’t complain about paying what I should pay. Despite all our bellyaching about taxes, we are taxed at much lower rates than many other countries—“No, the U.S. is not a high-tax country. But saying exactly how not-high-tax we are gets a little tricky. It[a graph] shows personal tax rates on $100,000 around the world. The U.S. comes in at 55th out of 114.” 55th! https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/01/how-low-are-us-taxes-compared-to-other-countries/267148/
For those who are curious, here are the nations with the highest taxes:
- United Kingdom. …
- Japan
- Austria
- Belgium
- Netherlands
- Denmark
- Sweden
Aruba? Really?
So I do not mind paying my fair share. That does not mean I do not have complaints. I do. My two gripes that really get under my skin are related. The first peeve involves people who complain the most about paying taxes and who also complain the most about the lack of services. “There should be more TSA inspectors so the security lines at airports are shorter.” “Why didn’t the FDA discover the contaminated yogurt I just ate?” “That bridge collapsed right under me. Somebody should be fired!” All the agencies we depend on for our safety and protection are paid for by taxes. We want the services without paying for them…..like education. I expect that when I drive over a bridge on an interstate highway that I will reach the other side, and, if I have an accident, there will be a state trooper in the area to assist. I am comforted by the fact that if one of my grandchildren swallows something he/she shouldn’t, the National Center for Poison Control is a phone call away. I feel more secure knowing that enforcement agencies, though underfunded, do exist. And I am grateful that when I need to recharge my psychic batteries, I can inhale the fresh, pure air of a National Park. All these things cost money, so I pay my taxes.
My second complaint involves displaced outrage. Many of my fellow Americans rant and rave when abuses of the system are committed—but only if they are committed by the poor and defenseless. The welfare recipient who squeezes fifty bucks from a Section 8 benefit, or the immigrant who does not kick in twenty tax dollars from his or her slave wages (by the way, most immigrants pay taxes) are the targets of venom spit by taxpayers who exhibit a moral outrage at these offenses. These red-faced countrymen cannot stand the fact that “these people cheat.” But they are not offended by the fact that some of the richest Americans pay fewer, if any, taxes than they do. Or that General Motors pays less than they do. I don’t get it. It is like throwing a fit that a poor person who robs a candy store of ten bucks escapes jail, but not getting upset when the banking industry swipes billions from hard working Americans and gets away with it. Apparently there is another set of standards of morality that applies to the wealthy who pay no taxes. Or maybe it is not economic distinctions that are at the root of this discrepancy, but something else……
Even high ranking American officials in government who don’t pay their fair share of taxes are not rankling my fellow citizens. “They’re just taking advantage of the tax laws.” But what they don’t pay has to be made up by John Q’s like me…..and you. And they enjoy the same services without shelling out a dime. Where’s the outrage? So how do the excessively wealthy freeloaders get away with it?
As ancient Rome self-imploded due to corruption, internal squabbling and civic apathy, Roman emperors diverted the people’s attention away from the important stuff by holding “circuses.” Nothing like forgetting about the collapse of roads and the “barbarians” at the gate by spending an afternoon at the coliseum watching gladiatorial combat or the sacrifice of Christians. The tactic hasn’t changed. The modern media gobbles up and highlights political blusters and accusations and we all follow along the next juicy if irrelevant story. The real issues that affect our lives are lost in the hype. It’s taxing, people….it really is.
by Ralph Maltese | Mar 5, 2017 | Uncategorized
Recoiling At The Lack of Recalling
Memory is a funny thing. When I was teaching I would marvel at what my students would remember—-and not remember. “Hey, Mr. Maltese, you wore that same tie the last three Tuesdays in a row.” This from Freddy who could not answer my question, “What novel did we finish yesterday?” or “Who wrote Mark Twain’s book, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn?” I usually let the students off the hook…they were kids, and they were in school to learn. I was harder on myself. I would be walking down a school corridor amidst all the hubbub and chaos of student traffic during the changing of classes, when Tiffany would run up to me. “Hey, Mr. Maltese, remember to change my Brave New World test score from a “78” to an “80.”
“Okay, Tiffany. I got it.”
I would continue my stride to my next class when Alfred approached me. “Hey, Mr. Maltese, can you write me a library pass so I can work on my research paper?” I get out my pad of passes and issue Alfred a library pass. In the process I would completely forget Tiffany’s change of grade request. I hadn’t “got it.”
Remembering names was a challenge. As a teacher I had to work hard in the beginning of the school year to memorize all 140 student names. It was important to them. And I did memorize them, but I think my own family suffered as a result. I was insulted when my mother called me by my brother’s name. I forgave her when, as a father, addressing my daughter Meredith, I would call out,“Christie….uh….Becky….uh….Jim…..uh….Nyssa (Nyssa was our cat)…..uh….Meredith.
I explained these memory failures on my brain’s having to juggle hundreds of student requests, lesson plans, administrative duties, and thousands of other responsibilities.
Now that I am retired, what is my excuse?
As a kid, I actually liked memorizing things. The times table, lines from Shakespeare, the lineup and batting averages of the New York Yankees. I can still recall lines from movies I last saw when I was ten, (“Klaatu barada nikto” the phrase Michael Rennie tells Patricia Neal to say to the robot Gort in The Day the Earth Stood Still) but I have to work hard to remember what I had for breakfast this morning. In college biology I had the genera and species for all the fungi we studied down pat. Now, when Polley and I watch a movie, this is a typical occurrence.
“Hey, hey, hey…there’s that guy…what did we just see him in? That Law and Order…..what was it? You know…the guy who it turns out, you know, turns out he was the serial killer…oh come on, you know….”
As it turns out we just saw the episode yesterday. Or we’ll watch a movie and the identity is in the brain but it is composed of cloud matter that is dispersed throughout my entire cerebral cortex and it takes time for the specks to coalesce into a name. I was watching Bullitt with Steve McQueen. Every guy I know watches that entire movie just for the chase scene. Steve McQueen pops into a taxi, and for two seconds the taxi driver is shown…could not think of his name….tip of my tongue, but the name would not materialize in my brain. Two hours later, the cloud forms and rains the answer—Robert Duval. And this brain freeze is with famous people. Not so famous is worse.
Meeting several people simultaneously at a social function is an intellectual challenge to the memory bank…..the vault usually empties after the first two introductions.
“This is Margaret, her husband Tom, Margaret was with me in shoulder therapy, this is Alice, her husband taught elementary school at Briar Beech, and you know Harry from book club (I did not remember Harry from book club), and Betty from the gym, she also has twins and her daughter almost went to Mount Holyoke like Christie and Becky.”
So later on, when I am nursing my Pinot Noir and trying to discreetly fish my Frito out of the spinach dip, I ask Polley for a refresher. “So the guy I am partnering with in bridge is the guy who taught at Briar Beech and was with you in therapy and his kid went to Mount Holyoke.” Polley just shakes her head.
The memory lapses seem to increase exponentially as I grow older. I will be sitting in my study when I realize I need something from our bedroom. I get up, walk into the bedroom while thinking about the next sentence I am going to write. Suddenly I find myself in the bedroom asking myself, “Why am I here? What is it I wanted?”
Lists have become very important. If Polley and I don’t compose lists, we find ourselves in stores aimlessly wandering and wondering what it was we needed to buy. And we have to write these lists the second we think of the items to purchase….lest we forget. Sometimes we forget what we remembered. While shopping for a dinner we will host, it is not uncommon for this dialogue to take place.
“One of the sides is twice baked potatoes, right?”
“Right.”
“Do we have to get potatoes?”
“No, I got them the other day…..maybe I thought about getting them the other day.”
“We better buy some just to be certain.”
We added the newly purchased potatoes to the pile of potatoes in the pantry (also known as our “garage”) at home.
Remember Texas Governor Rick Perry’s presidential campaign? During one of the debates, he argued that there were three government agencies that could be eliminated. As he began identifying these agencies, a bubble of tar or some other highly viscous material invaded his neural pathway, causing him to list only two agencies. He mentally grasped for the third, but the bubble won. I am not a big fan of the governor’s policies or thinking, not by a long shot, but I empathize with his embarrassing bout of forgetfulness. “There are three movies we want to see….La La Land, Hacksaw Ridge………”
We do spend time devising strategies to counteract our failures of memory. We promise ourselves that we would put important documents—-tax statements, gift certificates, doctors’ prescriptions, etc.—-in a “safe place.” We simply can’t remember where those safe places are, having succeeded only in keeping those important items safe indeed—safe from us.
I kept a journal of my fly fishing experiences, streams I fished, number of fish caught, flies used, weather and water conditions, all the information I would need to be successful on my next fishing excursion. I put the journal in a space which would provide easy access and an unforgettable location. I am still searching for that journal. My mistake was putting it where I could not possibly lose it.
In researching this topic, I found some cause for optimism. Memory loss is not the same as dementia.
“ Memory loss is not an inevitable part of the aging process
The brain is capable of producing new brain cells at any age, so significant memory loss is not an inevitable result of aging. But just as it is with muscle strength, you have to use it or lose it. Your lifestyle, health habits, and daily activities have a huge impact on the health of your brain. Whatever your age, there are many ways you can improve your cognitive skills, prevent memory loss, and protect your grey matter.
- Walk whenever possible
- Get plenty of sleep
- Avoid smoking
- Learn about omega-3 fats and their role in brain health
- Stay social by prioritizing face-to-face connections
- Learn something new
Furthermore, many mental abilities are largely unaffected by normal aging, such as:
- Your ability to do the things you’ve always done and continue to do often
- The wisdom and knowledge you’ve acquired from life experience
- Your innate common sense and your ability to form reasonable arguments and judgments” https://www.helpguide.org/articles/memory/age-related-memory-loss.htm
That is encouraging.
There is a nice little movie, Memento, in which the protagonist suffers from acute short term memory loss. In trying to fulfill his mission, since he cannot trust his memory, he writes notes to himself on his skin. Frustrated at my forgetfulness, I have considered this option, but then reality set in. I would have to gain five hundred pounds to increase my skin surface in order to write down what I need to remember.
So I am currently employing a strategy to justify my declining power of memory. It is all bogus, of course, but sometimes we need to lie to ourselves. One of my favorite movies is Charade, starring Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn. They meet in a skiing chalet, and he asks if they have met before, and suggests that they might become friends.
“Oh, no!” Audrey replies. “I already have too many friends, and until one leaves, I can’t possibly have another one.”
“Oh. Well, if one gets on the critical list, let me know.”
I argue that so it is with information. I have stuffed so much info into my gray matter over my tenure on this earth that I cannot possibly retain another fact or statistic or idea until one piece of information leaves my brain. Ten minutes into writing this blog a fantastic idea for a thought-provoking conclusion popped into my brain but, alas, I should have written it down the second I experienced the revelation. The great ending has evaporated into the ether. Sorry.
