Sixty-nine

I had a great idea for a blog post a little while ago and now I can't remember what it was. Senior moment? Save the jokes. They get tiresome and so do those instances where you are saying a sentence and all of a sudden a word totally escapes you, or you can't remember the words to a song, or the author of a favorite book slips from memory. Every time that happens there is a moment of panic: Is this it? Is this the start of it? Is this the beginning of the slow descent into that feared state of dementia?

The jokes don't help. Like this one. An old man is sitting at a table in a diner, obviously weeping. A waitress comes over and asks him if anything is wrong. He looks at her and says, "I have a beautiful young wife. We have sex, great sex, anytime I want. She is a great cook, she keeps the house great and she is intelligent and we always have something to talk about." The waitress asks him what is wrong with that, to which he replies, "I can't remember how to get home."

That aside, I had an idea about this sort of thing. Yes, they are senior moments, but not the too obvious simple loss of memory. The next time some youngster thinks it's funny having a senior moment, I am going to give him this. Look, sonny, I have lived much longer than you, and I have absorbed a whole lot more information than you have, and it just takes a little longer to sort through the database and come up with the correct piece of data. That's all it is, more stuff to look at before you find what you want.

Well, what about the idea that short term memory is what goes first. Got an answer for that too. That is new stuff that hasn't been filed yet, so your brain doesn't know exactly where to look for it. Instead it searches the huge mass of filed older information before it looks in the piles on the desk waiting to be organized and put in the proper places. If it takes too long, well, just give up and look later.

So, the real problem is not loss of memory but data management. What we need is a way to clear the disk cache and another to defrag the hard drive. Find those processes and there goes memory loss in a heartbeat.

Oh, and the great idea I had for a blog post, but forgot? This was it all along. I didn't forget anything. If the title fooled you, that is your dirty mind, not mine. It does have significance but figuring out what is up to you youngsters. Let's see what you come up with.