"micky" wrote in message
...
In alt.home.repair, on Sat, 22 May 2021 13:51:09 -0400, micky
wrote:


Well, I'm 75 and I plead ignorance. My brain has become saturated and I
try not to learn anything new because I need to forget something else to
make room :-).

I'm 74 and I can certainly appreciate that. In fact I heard that
Sherlock Holmes said so too. (I've told that so often without checking
first that even if he didnt' say it, I may have spread the story.)

Ironically, I'm probably learning more stuff now than ever before,
including when I was in school. I spend 3 or 4 hours a day on the web
reading one story after another. When I'm not doing that, I'm eating,
watching tv, and reading a news magazine on paper. And I think I
remember a lot of it, so I can only wonder what gets ejected from my
brain to make room.

My big problem now is not being able to think of the
word I want or the name of some famous person.

Yep, me too, but google is a fantastic help with that.
Hardly ever isnt the word I want on the first page of
hits and often the first non advert hit too.

Just now it took me 5 minutes to think of the word symmetric.

That's just the Alzhiemers, nothing to worry about until
you don't even recognise your own wife or kids anymore
and have forgotten how to eat and where to **** and crap.

All I could think of is symbiosis, a word I see
and use 1/20th of the frequency for symmetric.

But I also know I'm not getting stupid.

Yeah, it's a well known problem with old age.

There was a time, until age 45 or 50 or so that, except for
routine things, I could remember every place I'd ever been,

I still can except for garage/yard sales, but remember most of those.

everything I'd ever said, and everything I'd ever done.

I did occasionally get a surprise when someone
reminded me of a warranty claim etc we had
discussed. That hasn't got any worse tho and
I am a little older than you.

I am now forgetting a few details (though sometimes
after a couple hours they come back to me.)

I sometimes forget the name of someone I know
very well when trying to name them in conversation
to someone else, but it always come back later.

I should have written my biography earlier.
It's too late now to do a good enough job.

It would still work fine for me.

But, I can remember loads of stuff from my childhood through age 30.

I never could remember school results etc like some people could.
And it always did take some time for person's name to stick in my
head but in my case that must be genetic because my dad did
comment that the best way to help with that is to use it more.

But I never had any problem remembering vast numbers
of TTL ic numbers without trying for some reason.

Life got more routine then so I can't remember every detail -- I can't
remember if I changed the springs on the '88 LeBaron or the '95
LeBaron, or if I thought about it but never changed the springs at all.

I don't have that problem but I keep cars for much longer
than most do. Used the VW Golf for 45 years and it only
needed a handful of cheap repairs.

But I did a lot of traveling from 2017 to 2019 and I can remember
hundreds of places, including what they look like. When I was doing
something interesting, now, years later, I can remember the road I drove
down, where I turned right, where I parked, where I walked, where I
stopped to eat, what the rocks looked like where I went to the beach.
I can picture intersections, and the layout of stores and movie lobbies
that I was in.

Me too.

Doesn't it take more brain power and more brain storage to
remember a picture than a fact expressed in words? Would
*our* brains be so different from computer memory?

Yep, very different. You never get that weird effect that a particular
smell takes you back to some past event with computers.

And a tiny number suddenly don't even know what happened
for days before but can still speak and comprehend etc. And
those days come back later. You don't get that with computers.

And when I look at a spot on a map, I see what I saw when I was there.
(That's a separate thing related to my close relationship to maps.)

Yeah, me too. Doesn't work for lots of people tho.

I can from memory draw a map of the 2 countries I've been to lately,
including the shape of the country in detail, where cities are, the
roads between them, where "attractions" are, and within the cities the
major and sometimes the minor streets. I don't need a map anymore to
get around the cities or the country. Places I'd never been to before
2017.

Yeah, I have always had an excellent sense of direction, never get lost
even in places I have never been to before with no map or gps.

I was stunned when I bloke I was working with when discussing
something in his office said 'the swamp' and waved his arm in
the direction 180 degrees from where it actually is.

And when a mate of mine who chose to drive himself behind
me to a place just out of town had to come back at the same
time as I did because he wasn't confident that he could
come back by himself in his own car.

But I can't remember what word I want to use, or the
name of the person who invented whachamacallit.

Or even the name of some notorious criminal.

I never forget Manson's name or Hitlers tho for some reason.

And where is my recycle bin?

Much of the stuff I can't rmemeber might still be in there,

Yeah, I often find I can remember it later, particularly
with people I used to work with a lot decades ago.

because details come back to me sometimes after a few hours.
But I don't know how to speed this up or make it more frequent.

I don't either.