Geezer Jeopardy

Posted: Jul 11, 08 7:14am

As I've written before, I believe it's healthy to be in denial about your age, and it seems I have science on my side. My views have been confirmed by researchers from Yale, the National Institute for the Aging and the International Longevity Center, an institution presided over by 79-year-old Robert Butler, who puts in a 60-hour work week.

I nearly wrote “still” puts in . . . .as did the New York Times, in the story that reported these findings. But that insidious “still” is where the problem lies. Negative expectations take a powerful toll on the vigor in older people, according to researchers who study these things. Our culture's stereotypes of aging are so pervasive that they are difficult to resist, and many people accept them without realizing it.

Instead of succumbing, I propose we get a head start on trying to live the now-scientifically-confirmed truth of the old cliché, “You're only as old as you think you are.” That means, I'm afraid to say, giving up self-deprecating quips about “senior moments” to explain a memory lapse. Humor is a wonderful defense mechanism, but in this case denial may be a superior one.

I say this even though it means renouncing one of my favorite anecdotes, a story that has amused many, if I do say so myself. I will repeat it here for the very last time. I was at a dinner party and something came up that no one could quite remember. We all talked around it, collectively but unsuccessfully brainstorming our associations to the missing fact. About a half-hour after we had moved on to other topics, somebody's memory bank suddenly yielded the information, and he blurted out the answer. Everyone applauded. “We've invented Geezer Jeopardy!” I said. “You hear the question and you have 24 hours to think of the answer.”

I still think this is funny, and it's not as if I have an infinite surplus of clever quips. But that's the last time you will hear this one from me.