Partner and I have lots of interesting retirement schemes. Most of them rely on non-traditional methods, like keno and Powerball.
One plan is that I win big on "Jeopardy!," the TV game show. I've auditioned four times. I have high hopes.
But I didn't get called for an audition this year.
I know I did poorly on the online test. I used my laptop, which was a mistake; I skipped over a couple of questions just because the keyboard was balky.
But I can't blame it entirely on my laptop. The truth is that my memory is deteriorating very rapidly.
Once, not long ago, I was encyclopedic. I knew who was in what movie, and who wrote what, and what characters were in what books, and what year who did what. I was unstoppable. The other night, however, I was watching "Jeopardy!" while on the treadmill in the health club, and presumably my blood was pumping to all relevant sections of my brain, but my recall was patchy at best.
It happens, they say, with age.
You know the Sara Teasdale poem about climbing the hill?
I must have passed the crest a while ago,
And now I am going down -
Strange to have crossed the crest and not to know,
But the brambles were always catching the hem of my gown.
All the morning I thought how proud I should be
To stand there straight as a queen,
Wrapped in the wind and the sun, with the world under me -
But the air was dull, there was little I could have seen.
It was nearly level along the beaten track,
And the brambles caught in my gown;
But it's no use now to think of turning back,
The rest of the way will be only going down.
Sigh.
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