Cognitive Quirks of an Octogenarian

According to Wikipedia, one of the most highly cited papers on short term memory was written by George A. Miller, titled "The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two: Some Limits on Our Capacity for Processing Information." He was a Harvard University professor and the article was published in Psychological Review in 1956. Over the years its become known as Miller's Law and it argues that the number of things an average person can retain in our short-term memory is 7 plus or minus 2 items. (Why not just say 5 to 9 items, this inquiring mind wants to know.)

Several years ago I voluntarily took one of those long form cognitive tests as part of a twelve week class being taught here at my independently living facility on improving our memories. The class was a bust. We started out with 10 or 11 in the group but by the fifth week everyone dropped out. The class came with a thick workbook that involved doing daily timed math problems, writing long-hand every day and something else I've forgotten on the 'three legged stool' for keeping our brains healthy. The cognitive test was to be taken at the beginning and end of the class for comparison. And that test included the Miller Law list of seven objects named at the beginning of the session. I was able to repeat back six of them at the end. It was a good 'thinking day' for me, but our Enrichment Director who gave the test made it too easy because they weren't exactly random words. She looked around my apartment and I was able to follow her eyes then fix an object in my brain as she named things like purse, red, clock, notebook, etc., etc. So I don't believe the test predicted anything regarding how long random things stay in my short-term memory. 

More telling to me would be to count how many times I have opened the dishwasher door when I meant to open the freezer draw right next to it. Often enough to worry me and give me flashbacks to finding things in my dad's cupboards or refrigerator that belonged in the opposite place. When will I cross over the line and start putting the ice cream next to the glasses in the cupboard or a dirty plate in the freezer? I've decided that will be the marker that will push my panic button. For now, I'm checking and correcting myself midway through dishwasher/freezer drawer mix ups. 

Another marker I will use to judge if I'm in serious cognitive decline will be often I lose things. Up until this year I could count on three fingers the number of things I've lost in my entire life. (Yes, I'm that OCD person who obsessively keeps track of my stuff.) A few months ago I lost my Mahjong Card and I had to order a new one. Don't think that didn't rattle me! Worse yet, I keep thinking someone stole or accidentally took it home because the last place I saw it was on a table after we played and the room was filled with people milling around. Don't all seniors with draining brain power who lose things get paranoid and think others are to blame when they can't find something? 

In 2020 Trump did a press interview about the Cognitive Decline Test he took (and had mixed up with an IQ test). He was bragging all over Fox News about remembering the words, "person, woman, man, camera." Among other things, he said that no one could believe he could remember those words! For awhile that Miller Law memory exercise was a standard question on the yearly Medicare Wellness Test so he wasn't fooling anyone but you'd have thought by the bragging Trump did that he'd aced an SAT test. 

I just had a Medicare Wellness test last month and that question wasn't included this time. I think they know we old people compare notes and try to cheat on the answers. For example, no one here where I live admitted to having throw rugs on their floors so we could avoid the lecture about them being leading cause of falls in the elderly. This time my test had a full page of questions about depression and self medicating with drugs or alcohol. It also asking questions about food insecurity and I wondered what they do if a senior answers indicating they have to ration their food to make it last from social security check to social security check. The last week in the month when our food allotment around here is running low there's a lot of math involved in ordering our meals to get to a break even point on the last day of the month. It's more like a game around here because we don't like to leave any money behind for the management. No one here would go without, though, if they run short, because someone always has leftover money in their allotment they are dying to share. It's usually the same people who run over or don't use up their funds. Most of us work at and brag about how close we come to the break even point.

I've written about my dad being in a drug trial for an Alzheimer's drug and part of that trial involved me taking him in to get an extensive comprehensive cognitive test every two months for a year. Watching him take those tests were bittersweet because 1) It clearly showed his decline, but 2) his sense of humor came through in those dementia years. But that was over 25 years ago and they have new trials going for dementia and Alzheimer's patients. They have twice a month Dementia Support Classes here on my campus and I used to go to them when my brother was alive and I probably still should given the fact that a half dozen others with dementia are living in the independent living and every day they can be found tagging along behind their spouses. Occasionally they escape the careful eye of their spouse and someone else will help them find there way. We don't have any dementia patients living on their own here, though---they are all down in the Assisted Living or Memory Care building. It's both heart-breaking and a relief for the caregiver-spouse when their partner has to move on down the line because they can't handle it anymore. On the good side they can visit daily with a short walk.

I just finished binge watching the first season of OutLast on Netflix. It's one of those reality, survivor-type shows. They started out with 16 players and ended up with a three man team that split the million dollar prize. It took place in Alaska and they had to live off the land for a month and they were dropped off with very little supplies---a hatchet, knife, bow and arrows, a tarp and a spark marker to start a fire. I don't know how realistic these survivor TV shows are when they have trail cameras aimed at them every which way. But one thing is for sure: when I'm watching dystopia and survivalist shows I start questioning my mental health because for some quirky reason I only watch them when I'm worried about something big and consequential---after my husband died and during the pandemic back a few years ago. Probably the election now is why I picked OutLast. Those kinds of shows always make me feel better about the underlying thing that is keeping me awake at night, that my life is not so bad by comparison.  ©

Until Next Wednesday. 

 

 

 

Another School Shooting --- Alex Jones, JD Vance and Mr. Rogers

Here we are again in the aftermath of yet another school shooting. This one is the forty-fifth in the year 2024. That puts us at 417 mass shootings since two student killed fifteen classmates at Columbine High in Colorado in 1999---the start of this unholy trend that has exposed over 370,000 student to firsthand experience with gun violence in America. In December of 2012 when 20 six and seven year old children at Sandy Hook Elementary in New Town, Connecticut, were gunned down I thought for sure lawmakers would finally do something to get assault weapons off the streets and enact some sensible gun laws. But then Alex Jones started in with his conspiracy campaign falsely claiming it was all staged by crisis actors paid for by people trying to get tougher gun laws through congress, giving Republican lawmakers additional cover for not voting for the tighter laws that were being introduced.

It took a long time for Alex Jones to face a jury regarding his conspiracy theory about the mass murders at Sandy Hook but this year a court ordered him to liquidate his personal assets and to pay a 1.5 billion dollar settlement to the families of those children who were killed. They may not ever see any of that money because Alex off-shored a lot of his assets but at least there were consequences for what he put those parents through with his lies. And his Infowars Channel was shut down due to him filing for bankruptcy. That's a giant win for America in itself.

So here we are fourteen years after Sandy Hook and the NRA still has the Republican party by the balls, still controlling people like JD Vance who at a rally this week urged everyone to pray for the families at Winder, Georgia, where a fourteen year old killed four and sent nine to the hospital using an AK-47 assault weapon. Vance also said, “I don’t like to admit this. I don’t like that this is a fact of life. But if you’re, if you are a psycho and you want to make headlines, you realize that our schools are soft targets, and we have got to bolster security at our schools.” He went on to say, "Stricter gun laws are not the determining factor in preventing school shootings. The Kamala Harris answer to this is to take law-abiding American citizens’ guns away from them. " How can he or anyone say that with a straight face?

The exact words from Democratic Party Platform reads: "Democrats believe that we can reduce gun violence while respecting the rights of responsible gun owners. We believe we should expand and strengthen background checks for those who want to purchase a firearm – because it shouldn’t be easier to get a gun than a driver’s license. We believe we should ensure that guns don’t fall into the hands of terrorists (whether they be domestic or foreign), domestic abusers, other violent criminals, or those who have shown signs of danger toward themselves or others. And we believe we should treat gun violence as the deadly public health crisis it is." 

Joe Biden has long been calling for a ban on assault-style rifles---the guns of choice for so many mass murders---but it's not the official goal of the party. And even if it was, guns designed for warfare do not belong on our streets and they are useless for hunting. We don't allow private citizens to own tanks or fighter jets so how are guns designed strictly for killing people any different? There already is a constitutional line that allows us to separates weapons of war from weapons used for recreation and protection.

One day after the January 2024 shooting Trump said at a rally, “I want to send our support and our deepest sympathies to the victims and families touched by the terrible school shooting yesterday in Perry, Iowa, It’s just horrible, so surprising to see it here. But [we] have to get over it, we have to move forward.” I'm sure that was very comforting to the families who lost a loved one less that 24 hours earlier and that was sarcasm in case you can't hear how hard I'm pounding on my keyboard as I type this paragraph.

A couple of weeks ago when I was binging on buying political pinbacks I bought one that reads, "Thoughts & prayers, Policy & Change," and I've been wearing the last few days almost hoping one of the MAGA Republican would try to defend the mindset that thoughts and prayers are all we can do, that protecting guns is more important than protecting children. But so far, none of them have.

Look, I know sensible gun control laws isn't the total answer to stopping the heartbreaking and escalating trend we are on but it's a good start. If I was King I'd also put a Mr. Rogers-like figure back on the air and play segments of the show in all the elementary schools to help kids learn how manage their "mad feelings" and other valuable lessons he taught about getting along with others, bullies and a wide array of topics many kids aren't learning at home. But even that would be controversial in today's MAGA world. When Tom Hawks played Mr. Rogers in the 2019 movie, A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood the internet warriors in the MAGA world claimed Mr. Rogers was responsible for creating a whole generation of "soft pussies who don't know how to be real men." What they really meant is that women have forgotten our places and too many men have accepted their changing, more hands-on role in parenting, cooking, cleaning and being an equal partner in a marriage. I was totally shocked by the venom voiced against Mr. Rogers. None of which has little to do with my original topic of mass shootings but this is where my mind wandered today and I'm not editing it out. ©

Until next Wednesday.

 What Do You Do? Written by Fred Rogers

What do you do with the mad that you feel
When you feel so mad you could bite?
When the whole wide world seems oh, so wrong...
And nothing you do seems very right?

What do you do? Do you punch a bag?
Do you pound some clay or some dough?
Do you round up friends for a game of tag?
Or see how fast you go?

It's great to be able to stop
When you've planned a thing that's wrong,
And be able to do something else instead
And think this song:

I can stop when I want to
Can stop when I wish
I can stop, stop, stop any time.
And what a good feeling to feel like this
And know that the feeling is really mine.
Know that there's something deep inside
That helps us become what we can.
For a girl can be someday a woman
And a boy can be someday a man.

From Mahjong to Music with a Litte Bowling in Between

 

In my last post I wrote: "Many residents here [at the continuum care facility] have taken on self-appointed roles---social director, mayor, florist, management suck-up, food critic, complainer-in-chief …." and it occurred to me today that I've done the same thing. Some people here call me 'Mahjong Jean' but what I ready am is the self-appointed coordinator of a things mahjong. This is not unique around here. We have the Bingo Ladies who put on a once a month game with cash prizes, the line dancing teacher and the Bridge Director who both manages two sessions a week and the Crackers & Cheese fairies for lack of a better name.

Every since I co-taught mahjong classes last year, increasing our number of players from six to twelve, I've taken on the responsibility of text messaging everyone the day before our Wednesday games to see how many are playing so the next day I'll know how many tables and games I need to set up. I've also created a system to randomize who plays with who that as been very popular and I've established a once a month Sunday skill building game. Our latest skill building involves learning how to score our games because I got the (not so?) bright idea to challenge our sister campus in a tournament this fall. 

I've never been to a tournament except for bowling back in my man-hunting twenties when I was on an all-women's leagues at a bowling alley-slash-bar that had live music on the night when our league played. Back then it was thee place for singles to mingle. It's the place where I met my husband but that's a story I've already told in an old post titled Tall Tales and Little Fish.

I wasn't the best bowler, not the worst either but I wasn't there for that particular game. It was the boy-meets-girl part that attracted me to join the league. I had written a letter to Ann Landers---a newspaper advice columnist in case you're too young to know who she was. I was bemoaning the fact that I didn't think I've ever meet my forever guy. She answered with: “Get out and do things you enjoy doing and it will happen.” So I signed up for every leisure time class I could find and I joined the bowling league. The rest is history. 

When I look back on my life it seems like I spent a lot of time searching for a place to fit in and I rarely thought about the idea that others probably did or do the same thing whether it's at a new school or work place, in new neighborhood or church family. We all have experienced carving out a place for ourselves. For me, sometimes it's felt like I was carving in butter like when I helped form a Red Hat Society chapter and other times it's felt like I was carving in marble like being in my late twenties when I was 'man shopping' Ann Landers style.

Looking for my place in the world is such an old habit that I forget to stop and consider that I may have already found it, at least for this era of my life, in this place. Finding our places in the world means finding our purpose in life and that purpose does and must change as our environment and the people around us changes. It's exhausting---the constant looking, especially if we're looking outward for what can only be found by looking inward.

Change of topic: For a couple of days this week I was haunted by a song on a video that I landed on by chance in a Facebook Short Reel. I thought I would write a post about music in general and that song in particular. But the more I searched my memorial bank I couldn't come up with the reason why it got stuck on auto-play in my head. The song was Lady in Red by Chris de Burgh who is an internationally known British-Irish singer/song writer. In 1986 it hit the top of the charts all over the world. But I was never a fan of Chris's music per say. This week I listened to it over a dozen times and in six versions of the song sang at different points during in his career and I literally felt the sensuality of his voice and those lyrics wrapping around me like a hug. Finally I remembered why it resonated with me! 

I was in my mid forties when the song was popular and I had a red dress that I wore to a special occasion one evening and when we got back home that song played on the radio as Don helped me out of that dress as if he was unwrapping crystal stemware---slow and sensual with the red dress ending in a pool on the floor next to the bed. You can guess what happened next. Hearing that song again after all these years catapulted me back into a state of pure contentment, like when you know you are loved and everything in the world reminds you of that scene in the Wizard of Oz when the film goes from black and white to technicolor. And I have tears of remembered joy pooling in my eyes as I'm write this.

No wonder they use music so much over in the Memory Care building. If we are smart we'd all make ourselves a play list of the special music in our lives for when our brains start shorting out because they claim that our memories attached to music are the last thing to go when people get Alzheimer's and it can help us hold on to those memories. I know that to be true because music often blindsides me with an emotional response and a flashback. Usually instantly. No waiting around for two days like they did with Lady in Red and no embarrassing red cheeks when I finally figure out why that particular memory got buried a little deeper than so many others. ©

Until Next Wednesday.

 

                                       1985 original version