Age Can Play Queer Tricks on One's Mental Processes

By CHARLES M. GUTHRIE

of the Minneapolis Tribune editorial page staff

published by the StarTribune

date unknown; probably 1952-1954

   NOBODY can put his finger on the day when time began catching up with him.  Nobody can say that "yesterday I was young but today I am old."  Some folks are old at 40 and some are young at 60.  I am mired somewhere between and, if memory serves, have been "getting along" for quite a spell.

   A fellow becomes aware that youth is behind him when he stops being kittenish with the ladies, when he quits tripping lightly upstairs, when he knows that a job can wait, that nothing need be done "right this minute."

   I do not go to bed anymore and die for eight hours.  I toss and turn and get fits of insomnia and wonder why I ate the fried onions.  The weight of the covers is burdensome to the toes.  The corns scream. The mattress is too soft and the pillow too hard and the room is too hot or too cold.

   A man is on the far side of the hill when, as I do, he prefers home to going out on the town.  It takes stern distaff persuasion even to get me to a movie.  I like home cooking and home loafing--and home.

   THEY SAY that if you want to stay young you should get interested in something.  You should develop hobbies such as gardening or woodcraft.  That may be but there are some things even worse than old age.  If petunia culture or cabinetmaking is the way to youth, I'll just keep on resting.

   It isn't so much what age does to one's looks that frightens me.  You cannot judge age by appearance.  Some grey-heads are young and alert and so are others who sport bay-windows and are well into the molting process.

   WHAT GIVES me the creeps is time's erosion of the brain.  I confess that the only difference between me and an absent-minded professor is that I'm not a professor.  I walk into places and forget why I'm there.  I start shaving and can't find my razor.  I can't find the car keys because they're in the other pants.  I drive off to a show without the tickets.

   My wife will say when I get home , "Hurry up and dress.  We haven't much time."  When I ask why we are short of time this particular evening she will say, "For Pete's sake!  Don't you remember we're meeting Joe and Gracey downtown for dinner?"  Then I recall that we've gone over all this at breakfast and hang my head in shame.

   Now I've quit asking questions.  Every time I do I run into one of these fast ones.  When my wife reminds me that I've promised to get home by 5:30 it's usually news to me.  But I say "Oh, sure," automatically.  It saves humiliation.

   IT BECAME clear a few years back that the contracting veins were shutting off the blood flow to the cerebrum.  An incident occurred which gives me the shudders even yet.

   My brother-in-law was here briefly en route to Kansas City and wondered if he could get a plane out.  I found that one was leaving in 30 minutes and rushed out with his suitcase to the garage.  I put down the luggage, flung open the door--and backed the car over the suitcase.  The thing split open like a melon, littering the driveway with shirts, pajamas, socks and toiletries and leaving me nonplussed and aghast.

   You do not bounce back from such an experience overnight.  You never quite do.  For a time I feared I'd blown my stack.  I wallowed in self-analysis.  I told myself that it was a phase that would pass. But the mental lapses have continued and each one opens the old wound.  My dreams are tormented by shattered suitcases.

   THE OTHER evening after dinner my wife was putting on her coat and I asked her where she was going before I realized I shouldn't.  She gave me that incredulous glance and it broke me down.

   "Look," I cried, "this bothers me more than it does you.  I can't help it, I tell you!"

   "What in the world are you talking about?" she asked.  "What bothers you?"

   I told her not remembering things bothered me, not being aware of what was going on bothered me. "I," I said , "am getting old."

   "Don't be silly," she said.  "What makes you think you're getting old?"

   I said I'd just told her.

   "Because you don't listen when I'm talking?  Because you forget to buy the stamps or stop at the grocery store for the eggs?  Because you put the empty bottles in the refrigerator and leave the milk on the porch?"

   Then she said something I thought was rather sweet.  "Why, that doesn't mean you're getting old. You've always been that way."

Copyright 2013 StarTribune.  Republished here with the permission of the StarTribune.  No further republication or redistribution is permitted without the express approval of the StarTribune.