I’ve read that doing puzzles helps keep your brain sharp as you age.
I don’t like to brag, but I can often solve the Jumble puzzle at a glance. After years of making millions of typos at the keyboard, I’m accustomed to seeing words with letters in the worng odrer.
A granddaughter brought over a new game called Mobi. It’s like Scrabble but all the little tiles have numbers, plus, minus, multiply, divide and equal signs on them. The goal is to see how fast you can use all your tiles making math equations in a Scrabble-like configuration.
I’ve played it with her five times now and she’s won every game. I told her she doesn’t need to bring it over anymore.
The critical issue with my brain is storage. Most of my brain is taken up with random miscellany. I fear my brain is basically a large kitchen junk drawer — a few essential facts and figures nestled amid a whole lot of dead AA batteries, old keys and dried-up ink pens.
Why is it that I can remember my phone number from when I was in kindergarten? It’s not like someday I will try to call my younger self. Our phone number started with Ingersoll 6. That tells you how long ago my childhood was.
I can’t always remember all the words to hymns we sing at church, but I can remember my high school fight song — and the motions with pom-poms that went with it. (Bonus points!) “Y-E-L-L-O-W J-A-C-K-E-T-S! We yell it! We spell it! All through the game!”
To my credit, I’ve never broken out with the Yellow Jacket fight song midway through a hymn.
I sometimes can’t remember where I left my reading glasses, but I clearly remember the look on the face of my fourth-grade teacher Mrs. Grimsley, tears pooling in her eyes, when she told us President Kennedy had been shot.
I remember 90% of everything I learned in high school shorthand class. I was good — not as good as my friend Jo Ann, who entered shorthand contests and won awards, but I was going places with my shorthand skills. I went to a computer keyboard.
I’m not sure how Jo Ann fared. Last I heard she was teaching at Cornell, so I guess shorthand worked out well for her, too.
I can remember how long I was in labor with each of our three children. You don’t forget that. You can’t afford to forget that. It comes in handy even now.
I have three-ring notebooks filled with recipes, but I don’t have many of my mom’s recipes in writing. They’re in my brain, floating amid random paper clips, old ChapSticks and dried up tubes of Gorilla Glue. A dash of this, a dash of that, potato salad, baked beans and brisket. Everything a good cook needs to know.
It’s fun to rummage through the catchall drawer now and then. You often find forgotten treasures tucked in the corners.
Borgman is an author, speaker and columnist for Tribune News Service. She may be contacted at lori@loriborgman.com.
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