The Flying of Time
We’ve talked about this subject a bunch here at the blogosphere, but it’s one with good merit. As you age, time goes faster and faster and faster and there just ain’t nothing you can do about it.
I truly remember the day my daughter first saw daylight, like it was yesterday. After her birth I called everyone and their brother, ran around like a friggin’ proud nutcase, and handed out some very premium sticks of tobacco. When we got her home, she screamed every night and I didn’t have a good night’s sleep for almost six straight months. There were times we just wanted to stick her on the back deck for the evening, but the unconditional love was tremendous and it still is today. And I say that as today is my baby’s 18th birthday and she graduates from high school in less than two weeks.
Un-friggin-believable. No, really.
One of the weird things that keeps on happening to me is that I’ll be talking about something in great detail, from what I think is not too long ago, and my wife will remind me that it happened like twelve years ago! I’ll be like, “Get the hell out of here, that’s only three or four years ago,” and she’ll say, “That was 1997,” and then my brain starts to smoke and make clicking and hissing noises. It’s scary and I swear I can see a guy with a huge net lurking from the corner of my eye.
What’s really nutty is that my long-term memory is phenomenal… names, faces, dates, lines from movies… I’m like a damned computer. I will run into people in the mall that I haven’t seen in twenty-five years, and even though they may be grayer or heavier, I recognize them and yell out their name – as they look at me like I’ve got two heads, not having a clue who I am. I’m amazing with particulars from sporting events, can repeat entire dialogues from films I saw ten years ago, meals I had, cigars I smoked, and almost anything from “way back when” whether it was really important or not. But, holy crap, don’t ask me where my friggin’ car keys are.
I’m not kidding, my short-term memory sucks ass. I can have an item in my hands for ten minutes, place it down, then a minute later have absolutely NO CLUE where the hell it is. It’s awful. I took an IQ test not so long ago (yeah, right, it was probably a decade ago) and I scored pretty well. The results of the test break down into something like 14 different areas that your brain works in, and it scores each area separately, then cumulating the final. In the areas I’ve always used for writing and creating and problem solving, like when I had my ad agency, I basically scored off the charts. But one area on the test is for “Short-Term Memory” and for that I scored slightly above a chimp and just below Forest Gump (run, Zman, run!) Unfortunately it skewed the shit out of my test score and only confirmed that my brain is slowly rotting away.
Another annoying thing that we all suffer from as we get older is… brain freeze – forgetting a name of a person or place that we’ve seen a thousand times. We can picture them in our head, we even talked about them just yesterday - but for some ungodly reason our mind cannot produce the answer we’re looking for. Oh, it’ll pop into out noggins an hour later while driving to he store, but we blank out at the most embarrassing times, and it drives me insane. I swear sometimes I’m ready to be fitted for a dribble bib. But I actually have read articles on the subject and it seems that we aren’t completely going bonkers. Something happens in our heads as we get older where a part of the brain that needs to come up with a name, doesn’t fire like it used to. It’s almost as if you open a file drawer but can’t seem to find the folder. You frantically look thru folder after folder, but can’t find the info. I’m sure you hate that as much as I do, but at least you should know it’s not a degenerative mind disease, only nature having a little fun with our feeble aging heads.
You know, I hit 50 this past December and it not only doesn’t bother me in the least, but I really DO subscribe to the fact that it is ONLY a number. I feel good about who I am and that’s what matter most – well, that and the fact that I sure as hell don’t need those little blue pills – thank you to the good Lord above.
So, I’m happy that my beautiful girl has made it through 18 years with her completely mental old man, and I thank God for that, too. I think my secret to keeping sane, whether in times of adversity or just on any plain old day – I stay in the present moment. I keep my head and thoughts grounded where I am, not dwelling on events of the past that can’t be changed, or scenarios in the future that haven’t ever happened. I try to stay right where I am and enjoy the moment. And THAT is what really does keep me a happy camper on a daily basis – even though I can’t drive anywhere ‘cause I don’t know where I left my freakin’ car keys.
Peace and love to all,
Tommy Z.
JR CIGARS Blog With the Zman
