Welcome To The Golden Years

HEALTH AND AGING WAS THE ONLY TOPIC I could think of to put this little diddy in. It certainly won't make the the Hubpages top 10 because of its lack of originality and its brevity and will probably earn an empty circle soon.

My wife sent me the following story, which was sent to her because the sender thought that I could have written it. I had to laugh at it because this hits way too close to home (I'm 68 and prone to this sort of thing). In any case, because this story has been circulating in the Internet for a while so I apologize if you have seen this already:

Several days ago, after an errand, I walked into the parking lot, but couldn't find my keys. I quickly gave myself a personal "TSA Pat Down."

They weren't in my pockets. Suddenly I realized I must have left them in the car. Frantically, I headed for the parking lot. My wife has scolded me many times for leaving my keys in the car's ignition. She's afraid that the car could be stolen. As I looked around the parking lot, I realized she was right.

The parking lot was empty. I immediately called the police. I gave them my location, confessed that I had left my keys in the car, and that it had been stolen.

Then I made the most difficult call of all to my wife: " I left my keys in the car, and it's been stolen."

There was a moment of silence. I thought the call had been disconnected, but then I heard her voice. "Are you kidding me?" she barked, "I dropped you off!"

Now it was my turn to be silent. Embarrassed, I said, "Well, can you come and get me?"

She retorted, "I will, as soon as I convince this cop that I didn't steal your damn car!"

Welcome to the golden years....

Does this strike close to home for you? It does me for sure.

WHILE THIS LITTLE VIGNETTE IS MORE THAN FUNNY, in real life it can be a warning sign, especially if it is as far out as this; while not this bad, I have found myself in similar situations. I keep track of them although my family thinks I am crazy, or as they like to say in today's vernacular "cray-cray". Why do I care so much? Because my maternal grandmother died of Alzheimers and allegedly one of my paternal uncles did as well. Add to that the results from my 23 and Me DNA testing showed more markers having a higher probability for contracting Alzheimers than markers showing a normal or lower probability. So, I am cautious and watchful. (DNA markers are not always right, of course; they indicated I shouldn't have male-pattern baldness either, but it started when I was in high school, go figure.)

So, in any case, my caution is while these episodes may be funny, be on the watch out with your loved ones over 50. Lots of people will "forget" things temporarily and then remember them later, that is normal (but really frustrating!) but the frequency shouldn't be abnormal. Nor should permanent forgetting of things that should have been and have been remembered before. An example of this might be someone having breakfast that morning then swearing up and down that evening it didn't happen. If that begins to happen, that should set off an alarm bell or two.

So should flat out forgetting where you put you something important. Now that is coming close to home. I can't remember what it was now (no pun intended), and it has been more than once, where I put something away to retrieve a short time later. Well, a short time later comes around and I didn't have a clue where it was. Fortunately, I ultimately did remember, not stumble across and then remember (although that has happened as well), but did remember hours or days later and went to retrieve what ever it was. To me, that is scary; I can't convince my docs yet to take it seriously, but I will keep trying ... if I remember to.