Akela, Tom Mix and...

I read somewhere that at our age, "getting lucky" means walking into a room and remembering why you went in there.

There's a lot of truth to that.

But I'm working on a solution to that almost universal problem for people over 70.

Logic tells me that our memory banks have gotten too full.

Nature in all its wisdom automatically deletes, or greatly reduces the intensity of bad memories. So that's not what is clogging up our brains.  It's those left over "bits and pieces" of the good times that are the problem.

"Artifacts" is the computer word for them. Little tiny memory "shavings' floating around in our brains that were simply left over from the deleting process. They serve absolutely no practical purpose.  All they do is take up space in the brain.

I know that's the case with me.

So, I'm working on a plan to find a way to totally delete these little buggers...in order to have more room for today's activities and events.

I don't see any reason whatsoever for my mind to be cluttered with such memories as:

Jake Barnhart told us once at a Cub Scout meeting that his great, great grandfather was Samuel Morse, the author of the Morse Code.

Or, according to the Cub Scout Law:

The Cub follows Akela
The Cub helps the Pack Go
The Pack helps the Cub grow
The Cub gives good will

(I lied. I copied that off a Cub Scout plaque that somehow followed me all these years. My poor old mind is not the only thing that is cluttered up.)

But, as I was saying, my mind is filled with flashes of useless memories and scenes of the past that serve no purpose whatsoever.

Such as:

Birthdays of old girl friends....and their phone numbers

....all with either the ED or FR prefixes.

Rememberng everything about the day Bonson Hobson and I rode our bicycles on a street that was in the process of being paved and literally got covered with black tar.

Remembering exactly when and where I was when I first tasted what later became my favorite foods.

Remembering the day Wilson Snell and I spent all day drawing a "reasonable facsimile" of a Ralston Cereal "box top" to send in for a Tom Mix secret decoder ring. We spent half the day trying to find out what a "facsimile" was.

Remembering chasing Martha Ann Caldwell and Judy Anderson around the Elizabeth School playground in the fifth grade.

Remembering how pretty those the girls at Piedmont Jr. High had become....

Remembering how beautiful and exciting the girls at Central High School were....and how wonderful their hair smelled!  I think the shampoo many of them used back then was called "Aqua Marine."

Remembering.....holding hands.....

and...that first kiss.....

and...


Oh, forget it.

I'm going to hold on to my useless memory fragments.. What's so bad about forgetting why you walked into a room.....anyway.

-Ed