How's That, Again?

Thoughts on . . . something.

For the past year, I believed I was 71 years old. It took my investment counselor (doesn’t that sound bougie) to inform me that it wasn’t the case. This can happen once you reach “a certain age.” What is not certain is at exactly what “age” this occurs. In my case, it was around forty-five when I informed my physician that I was a year older than I was, and declined to correct the record out of embarrassment. He probably made a note in my records indicating early-onset fogyfication.

It turns out there’s a simple formula for discovering how old you are:

Current year minus birth year equals your age.

For example, the current year is 2025 (I think). My birth year, if I remember correctly, is 1954. Subtracting 1954 from 2025 gives 71. A keen observer, noticing that I've mistakenly believed I've been 71 all year, would see this as an error in the calculation, since I must have actually been 70 for a significant portion of it. That would be a mistake. I might have thought I was 62 last year, and you, the reader, would have assumed I would simply be one year off in my incorrect age when it could be much worse.

As it turns out, I just had a birthday a week ago, so the whole thing finally worked out. Also, if you saw me in person, you would be disabused of any notion that I was 62.

In 2024, the formula would have yielded age 70 for the entire calendar year, even though I was 69 between January and late May, technically. One might use this to make the case that the formula is bollocks.

But that’s not the point.

The “point” is that in very, very late middle age, your brain, if you’ve maintained it as poorly as I have, begins to deteriorate, resulting in embarrassing moments such as forgetting your age. Fortunately, along with this deterioration comes a lack of embarrassment and an increasing inability to give a shit.

It’s the little, niggling, unimportant things that you lose first, like all nouns and proper names, the thing you were going to say next, or why you are standing in this room. But these aren’t a problem. At least not for you. For everyone around you, yes.

More important, you don’t forget the big, critical things, such as who is your spouse (even though you don’t know how old she is, either), where you live, and how to put your pants on one leg at a time, unlike important people like George Clooney.

So, in conclusion, don’t worry about your declining mental acuity. I can promise you that you won’t forget the essentials, or my name isn’t . . . um . . .