by Bob Trowbridge

Created on: April 16, 2009

My less than sainted mother used to say, "I finally got all of my stuff together and now I can't remember where I put it." Remembering where you put things is one of the big challenges of growing old. Closely related to that is forgetting what you were looking for in the first place.

My wife apparently thinks that I am getting more psychic as I get older. She frequently asks me, "What am I looking for?" Or better yet, "What was I just thinking?" It's flattering that she thinks I might know what she is looking for or even what she was just thinking. She must be very disappointed in me.

We're all familiar with the person who can't find their glasses and the glasses are planted on top of their head. That's a very mild form of the where-did-I-put-it? syndrome. One time my cousin was looking all over for his camera. "I just had it," he exclaimed. Actually, he still had it. He was holding it in his right hand. He held the camera up high so it wouldn't get in his way as he looked for the camera he was holding.

For writers, finding the mot juste is very important. Mot juste is French for the best or most appropriate word to express what you're trying to say. For the elderly, finding a word that even comes close to what they're trying to say is sometimes a challenge. This gap is often filled with all-purpose words such as "thingy, thingamabob, whatchamacallit," or my wife's favorite, "dukey." "Where's the dukey?" she would ask. I like to tell her she's wearing it.

Memory has to be one of the biggest growing old issues. Forgetting the names of people you have known for years can be an embarrassing problem. If you're in a situation where everyone knows everyone, you don't have to remember anyone's name and there's a good chance someone else will say it.

But when you're with one person and someone else comes up to you, the polite thing is to introduce the pair. But that requires that you remember the name of the person you're with AND the person who just accosted you. The best way to handle this is just to pretend that you're not with the person you're with and you can greet the newcomer without using their name.

There are many problems for the elderly related to memory but I've forgotten most of them.

The next biggest category for the growing old class is decreased physical functioning. This can take as many different forms as you have body parts. The most obvious have to do with hearing and vision. To a large extent, vision can be corrected with glasses and hearing with hearing

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