|
  I read an article the other day about how, after age thirty, your brains starts shrinking and your memory begins to fade. Things we remembered without a problem for years are suddenly harder to recall. The name of that band that played that song is still there, it just takes longer to access.
Memories are arranged into three categories. Procedural memory handles the storage of our shoe tying and driving and sports skills. Semantic memory stores our facts and figures. And Episodic memory covers personal experiences and events. Of the three, evidence shows that episodic memory is the first to deteriorate. And it begins at age thirty. So right when we think we're at the prime of our lives, we begin forgetting the experiences we depend on that define our virility.
 For instance, how impressive is it to our significant others if we forget what we ate on our first date? Or where we went? Or even whether or not we shared our first kiss that night?
It's a scary thought to contemplate that at such a relatively young age, we begin our slow steady descent toward dementia. Where did I leave my cell phone? Where are my car keys? A trick I had to learn years ago was that any time I handled something like my wallet or keys or phone, whenever I set them down, I made a mental visual note in my mind of just where I was leaving it.
Ever leave your credit card at a store? Don't put your wallet away until you've gotten your card back. Keep it in your hand and that'll train your brain. Sometimes our procedural memory does things without us thinking, and we have to intercede and force ourselves to remember actions we've performed thousands of times. Just so we don't have to call our phone in order to find it.
 The one good thing about all this memory loss is that the episodic type is queued up first on the disappearance list. As a human race, we wouldn't survive very long if we couldn't remember how to flush a toilet or what an offensive charge was in basketball. Or worse yet, imagine forgetting how to double-click a mouse!
I'd much rather forget my third grade teacher (Mrs. Causey) or that paddling I got because of her (ouch) or the rat's name on Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (Splinter) than how to make a Long Island Iced Tea (vodka, rum, tequila, gin, triple sec, cola). or to capitalize the first letter of a sentence. Memory loss is just a part of life that we all have to accept. The secret is to learn little pneumonic and visual tricks to help ourselves remember things.
Speaking of remembering, I read an article the other day on memory loss and how, after age thirty, your brain shrinks by a half percent a year …
|
Ross Cavins
