Coprolite Newsletter, July 2005

I ran across an article that explains how to decide when an older person has reached such a state of decline that the family needs to intervene. I thought I’d better read it, because I’m sure my kids studied it closely. There was good news and bad news.

According to the article, the warning signs that you’re no longer coping include:

1. A shortage of food in your refrigerator. No problem here. Actually, our family sometimes intervenes because we have the opposite situation. My wife is a gourmet cook. Our refrigerator overflows with leftovers too wonderful to throw out. There are also likely to be several doggy bags dragged home from restaurants (which all seem to insist on serving oversized meals nowadays). When our youngest son visits, he makes pointed inquiries as to how long something has been in there before he’ll risk trying it. Every so often, our youngest daughter volunteers to come over and clean it out for us. All in all, I’d say that by the “refrigerator” measure we are the direct opposite of old.

2. A rapid change in eating habits or weight. Again, I think we’re okay by this measure. True, there’s been a change in eating habits. My wife no longer makes desserts or keeps any ice cream in the house (unless, of course, some grandchildren are coming over). However, this doesn’t seem to have resulted in a noticeable change in weight. I used to find my inability to lose weight discouraging. That was before I learned that it helps keep us from scoring higher on the senility scale.

3. Mismatched or soiled clothing. Okay, this is one where I score alarmingly high. But there are extenuating circumstances. My clothes have never matched, since I’m color blind (which has nothing whatever to do with age). They tend to get soiled because drops of soup or gravy that might ordinarily land on a napkin in my lap now splat onto my slanting shirt front instead. This follows from my success in maintaining my weight (Item 2 above, which you will recall I scored as a positive thing).

4. Poor housekeeping, such as stacks of unopened mail or stains on the carpet. We get mixed results on this one. Being a very busy home-based executive, I do tend to ignore any mail that doesn’t look like a check. On the other hand, my wife is quite good about throwing away ads and junk mail. We’re both pretty bad, however, when it comes to magazines. She has a policy against throwing away any publication containing a recipe. For my part, I’m an avid student of current events and popular culture. Therefore, I like to completely finish reading a news magazine before starting on the next week’s issue. I’ve gotten a little behind. At this point, I’m still reading about President Bush’s reelection campaign. The first President Bush, not the second one. Occasionally, either my stack of news magazines or my wife’s stack of cooking magazines topples over and knocks a coffee cup onto the carpet. So we do score fairly high on piles of mail and carpet stains. However, this is really caused by her interest in gourmet cooking and my efforts to reach a deep understanding of recent history. I don’t think age has much to do with it, do you?

5. Poor short term memory. No age-related problem here. For some reason, I’ve never been able to remember names, so there was nothing to diminish in that regard. As for what my wife refers to as my “woolgathering,” that’s not really a memory lapse. It’s a sign of my ability to focus intensely on the really important stuff I’m thinking about and put aside minor issues such as where I left my glasses or what street I was supposed to turn on to get home.

Generally, I don’t think we score too badly on the age-decline test. Of course, in my case it’s mostly due to the fact that I’ve been sloppy and forgetful from childhood on. Either I’ve managed to preserve my youthful outlook, or I was born precociously old.

––Wayne Adams
wayne@coprolites.com
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