When I was about eight years old, my older sister Merna was in junior high school (or what is now called middle school). She had always loved the idea of being a teacher, and had taught me to read and do simple arithmetic when I was just three years old. All the adults thought I was a genius, but of course I wasn’t. Merna was the only one who seemed to understand that little kids’ minds are like sponges and are capable of learning much more, at a much earlier age, than the grown-ups realized at the time, and I was her captive pupil.

Anyway, while in junior high, Merna had been chosen to play the role of Marc Antony in the school’s performance of Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar.” And for those of you who didn’t manage to stay awake during English class, Marc Antony’s soliloquy at Caesar’s funeral is a long and complicated one.

So guess who was tagged to be her rehearsal coach. Our mother or father? Oh, no . . . not in those days. Our parents were not our buddies or study mates; they were our bosses, our wardens, our disciplinarians. They made us do our own homework, invent our own games, eat whatever was prepared for us, and make our own beds. Those were harsh times. (But look at how well we turned out!)

The point of this whole story — almost a soliloquy in itself — is that, during the weeks of coaching Merna for her big debut, I managed to memorize the entire long eulogy along with her. In fact, if I hadn’t been so small, I probably could have been her understudy for the play itself.

And to this day, I still remember about half of it. It’s the one that begins “Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears. I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him . . .” And so forth.

“Well, so what?” . . . I hear you ask.

All right — if you insist . . .

What I’d like to know is this: If I can remember something like that — something I learned as if by osmosis, and quite by accident, three-quarters of a century ago — why in hell don’t I know where I left my reading glasses? I had them just a minute ago!

And if I can still recite Lady Macbeth’s mad scene from my own high school days, why am I not sure — five minutes after walking out of the bathroom — whether I actually brushed my teeth?

The key to my file cabinet? I know I put it in a safe place, somewhere I’d be sure to remember.

But ask me what I wore on New Year’s Eve of 1961, and I’ll describe it down to the color of the lipstick in my little beaded evening bag.

I can name every one of the 50 U.S. states in alphabetical order; but I have to triple-check whether I entered the time of my next doctor’s appointment on my calendar.

And — which should come as no surprise to anyone who knows me — I’ll rattle off the names of the 15 former Soviet Republics and their capital cities . . . but not the names of the people I met at our neighborhood book club the other day.

I also know almost every punch line of the entire “Golden Girls” TV series. So why can’t I remember what I ate for dinner last night?

I’m not going senile. I have no problem keeping track of the important things — like actually making that doctor’s appointment, refilling my few prescriptions and taking them on time every day, and all of the birthdays of my remaining friends and relatives (and even the dead ones). But the perfect adjective to describe what I’m trying to convey as I write my blog posts . . . that’s a whole different ball game.

It’s not dementia (thankfully). It’s apparently — according to what my contemporaries and my doctor tell me — a natural byproduct of living longer than I ever expected to. As we age, we tend to lose things. I suppose if we live long enough, we’ll leave this world as we entered it: wrinkled, bald, toothless, and without a rational thought in our heads.

But first, some of us will be elected president.

Just sayin’ . . .

Brendochka
10/9/25