Mental Challenges, Laughter and Good Food

for writers and other humans

Happy Sunday!

The other day I was summoned to my doctor’s office for a Medicare Check-Up. While there, I was asked - after reassuring them that yes, I could feed myself and get out of my chair unaided, lucky me - I was asked to memorize three words, and then draw a clockface. Three words: baby, kitchen, chair. (Do they have the same ones for men?) Baby, kitchen, chair. I immediately started worrying about that baby on that chair in the kitchen, would he or she fall off? Was he/she alone? I drew the clockface, still thinking about the baby. I didn’t ask, Arabic or Roman numerals, but worked from 12 backwards anyway. Then I thought - in ten or twenty years, will anyone know what a clockface looks like? I prefer time to go round and round, not slide digitally along with a depressing small click that can never be reversed. But there are whole generations now who only know digital - time slithering away from them one digit at a time. Was this a test of my memory of things past? I was asked the three words again. Baby, kitchen, chair. The baby was still on the chair; what a relief. Then they let me go.

I met my old friend the singer/songwriter Ben Harrison in the waiting room, and asked him if he’d done his clockface ok. I didn’t ask him what his words had been. He grinned at me and sauntered off, presumably to write more songs and perform them, as the Songwriters’ Festival was on.

I thought - this was an easy gig, the easiest I’ve had in a long while, this dementia test, as I am told it was. Mostly, I’m asked to perform way above my pay grade: get on speaking terms with my new I-phone that talks back, scan documents to send electronically to the UK, remember dozens of passwords or know where to find them. Find out what Bitcoin, ChatGBT and Gemini are, apply for a new passport, use any social media other than this one - all challenges to the 20th-century analogue brain that I have still, no upgrades available. Writing the synopsis of a novel, changing a plot-line, writing a blurb for someone else, any of the above might challenge some people, but these activities were stored in my old brain years ago and still feel easy-peasy, or nearly so. But the learning curve of the last 20 years has been a steep one, and I’m still on it, floundering uphill like Sisyphus with his stone. Admittedly, one text or phone call and the Mac lady, Cindy, comes galloping up on her scooter to bail me out - me and the other ageing writers of Key West, faced with the ever-changing demands of our new technology, that seems to need attention the way new-born babies used to, four or six times a day. (There’s that baby again…Damn, get it down off that chair.)

Apart from this, I went with my husband as an early-birthday treat to see the inimitable Paula Poundstone perform. We laughed for two solid hours. How does anyone stay that funny for that long? Talk about a mental test. She told us that we Key Westers think we’re normal, and we’re not. We think we aren’t in Florida, but we are. We should go to the mainland once a week at least, learn the language. We think we’re one human family - again, we think we’re human? Really? The audience howled. And she didn’t pull her punches politically, either, and we ended up singing Pete Seeger’s “We shall overcome.”

Laughter does one so much good. I haven’t laughed for months - since January, probably. And then there’s food: I picked up Stanley Tucci’s book about what he ate last year. Why do I care about what Stanley Tucci had for lunch? Because he’s such a real human and because he makes me leap out of my chair and make myself a frittata for my lunch instead of leftovers from the fridge, and because you can always just cook up a little pasta if you’re down, and the world will right itself again.

Thanks for reading.