.....Susan Jacoby's book "Never Say Die" is a call for boomers to look at what she (65) calls, "real old age, as opposed to fantasyland." It's a kind of a balloon buster to the belief among the younger set that if you work out often enough, watch your weight, and stay stressless, you'll "practically live forever." Scholar Jacoby writes, "...We need to face reality...that by the time men and women reach their eighties and nineties, not the best--but the worst years of their lives generally lie ahead." It's like Burns writes in "To a Mouse," "....mousie, thou art blessed compared wi' me, the present only toucheth thee...but forward, tho' I canna' see, I guess and fear." Ms.Jacoby goes on to claim that anyone who lives beyond 85 has a 50-50 chance of winding up in a nursing home. RH+ keeps telling me that when she's gone, I'll wind up in a nursing home. NO WAY! I refuse to be nursed. And, by the way, the chances of her going before me are astronomical since I'm 14 years older than she is, and her car is 10 years younger than mine.
.....But that's not the worst of it. Jacoby goes on to say that the Beyond 85s Club, (of which I am a member), has a 50% chance of developing dementia. I'm not too happy about that idea--not so much that I might be demented, but that my blog will be very difficult for people to read. They will have to figure out what I'm trying to say. But I have no doubt that Phil, and Ruthie, and Bob Fox, JR, and any other Ph.Ds will have no difficulties in translating my dementianess into modern English if they work together as does our Congress. (Am I making sense here? Or are things getting out of control?) Well, the truth is that I am approaching 87 at the end of this month. I only wish that my mother had waited two more days so that I could have been born on Leap Year. In that case, like Rafe Rackstraw (born on Leap Year) in "HMS Pinafore", inasmuch as I would have had only 21 birthdays since 1924, I would currently be only "a little boy of 21" who only has to look forward to getting laid.
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I don't think you need to worry about dementia, Cuz Norman. I had a bone density test about ten years ago, in connection with the possible need for mineral supplements as a prophylaxis against osteoporosis. When the results came through, they told me there was so much mass to my bones that I might GET osteoporosis but that I'd never SUFFER from it, since I could lose a lot of bone but it wouldn't matter as there'd be so much left. I have a hunch your brain is much the same. Cuz Ruth
ReplyDeletePhil - thanks for news of Moose. I'll keep hoping! Ruthie
In the 19th Century, Charles Baudelaire advised us to, "Be drunken." "Be Drunken if you would not be the martyred slaves of time; be drunken continually! With wine, with poetry, with virtue, as you please."
ReplyDeleteWhile dementia is a ghastly fate for anyone, the few sufferers that I know seem to be literally feeling no pain.
Fear not, Doc. You figure to be no more demented than you ever have been. Your constant exercise of your gigantic mental capacities should enable you to continue in wisdom well past a hundred.
Like the babbling brook, you should go on and on and on, to the delight of those who appreciate your ruthless standards of personal excellence, your personal standards of ruthless excellence, and the fun person you have always been.