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Nov. 6, 2009
Rabbi Berel Wein: Choosing to hear
JWisdom.com Zero to 1/60th: How to Empower An Hour with Gavriel Aryeh Sande (7 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick The mullahs' big week
Suzanne Fields A Fallen Wall for Fallen Man
Nov. 5, 2009
The Kosher Gourmet: Three scrumptious -- but simple -- butternut squash dishes
JWisdom.com Hidden Hints: Unlocking Faith & Prayer with Rabbi Jay Yaacov Schwartz (10 minutes)
Nov. 4, 2009
Tom Hamburger and Kim Geiger: Should prayers be covered?
JWisdom.com When God played peacemaker With Rabbi Sroy Levitansky (5 minutes)
Nov. 3, 2009
Martin Peretz: Beware, Barack. Beware, Rahm. Beware, Axelrod
JWisdom.com Are you are closet idolater? With Sara Yoheved Rigler (10 minutes)
Nov. 2, 2009
Paul Greenberg: The Holocaust is now on Facebook
JWisdom.com Abraham's Strange Change With Rabbi Yitzchok Fingerer (5 minutes)
Oct. 30, 2009
Rabbi David Aaron: Secret to Immortality
Caroline B. Glick Silencing dissent in America
Oct. 29, 2009
Lini S. Kadaba: Do tactics avert flu or reduce humanity?
JWisdom.com We Must Revamp our Religious Vocabulary With Gavriel Aryeh Sanders ( 10 minutes)
Oct. 28, 2009
Rabbi Yonason Goldson: Atheists in Bubbleland
JWisdom.com Why what we wear impacts who we are With Rabbis Mordechai Becher, Menachem Golberger and Aliza Bulow ( 10 minutes)
Oct. 27, 2009
Paul Greenberg: The United Nations Is Outraged Again, Or: Department of Mideast Static
JWisdom.com The Science of Love With Rabbi Jonathan Rietti ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 26, 2009
The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Damaging disclosures with a twist
JWisdom.com Wisdom and Wonks With Rabbi Eytan Feiner ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 23, 2009
Rabbi David Aaron: Are you ready for the ultimate pleasure?
JWisdom.com Watermark and oneness with Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 4 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick Stop using limited powers in a way that expands our enemies' advantages over us
Oct. 22, 2009
Steven Emerson: Terror Cases Share Desire to Kill Americans
JWisdom.com No More More Family Fights --- Really? By Sarah Chana Radcliffe ( 5 minutes)
Oct. 21, 2009
Tonya Alanez: Holocaust denier sues survivor, calling Auschwitz memoir 'vicious lies'
JWisdom.com Meditating Jewishly: A Panacea for Success by Sarah Yoheved Rigler ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 20, 2009
Dennis Prager: Obama and Dalai Lama: Why Israel Worries about U.S. President
JWisdom.com Abraham was not religious By Rabbi Yitzchok Fingerer ( 6 minutes)
Oct. 19, 2009
JWisdom.comWhy Good People Do Bad Things By Rabbi Eytan Feiner ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 16, 2009
Rabbi Yonason Goldson: The Perfect Number
JWisdom.com Hearing Voices By Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 5 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick How Turkey was lost
Oct. 15, 2009
Jeff Jacoby: Peace vs. the 'peace process'
JWisdom.com: Former MTV producer and stand-up comedian Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff: Taming a Control Freak (A VERY fast 15 minutes)
Oct. 29, 2003
Mortimer B. Zuckerman: Graffiti On History's Walls (MUST-READ!)

Jewish World Review March 17, 2009 / 21 Adar 5769

What Was I Going To Say?

By Mona Charen


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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | The Daily Telegraph brings welcome news — "Old age begins at 27 as mental powers start to decline, scientists find." It seems that the University of Virginia conducted mental acuity tests on 2,000 adults over the course of seven years. The results: Your steel-trap brain is at its best around the age of 22. By the time 27 rolls around, you've already begun to depreciate.


Those of us who are well past 27 can smile smugly as the younger set takes in the fact of its relative senescence. A 30-year-old may feel pretty immune to the ravages of time, but aha! we now know that he or she is taking just a smidge longer to factor those square roots than someone fresh from college.


As someone who got her first gray hair at the age of 24, I've always been unusually conscious of time passing. This needn't be morbid. My junior high school French teacher had a sign on her desk that read "Wasted time is wasted life." Bearing that in mind can make you crazy or it can make you productive. It may have made me a bit of both.


Study or no study, most 27-year-olds will not perceive their creeping decrepitude. That comes later. About age 45, most adults notice big things, like their vision deteriorating. "It's the age when your arms get shorter," explained an ophthalmologist. I don't mind this. Before I had Lasik surgery I wore glasses anyway. It's not such a shock to need readers — though vanity forbids doing the only sane thing, which is wearing them on a chain around your neck. I'd rather leave a pair in each room and spend time patting piles of papers in search of missing ones than look like Marion the Librarian.


Becoming far-sighted isn't so bad. Losing your short-term memory, however, is another matter. What was I saying? Oh yes, short-term memory. In the last several years I have forgotten countless appointments, addresses, events, and e-mail addresses. I laugh if someone tells me a phone number when I am without pen and paper. I have three calendars and a BlackBerry that rings to remind me of things and I still manage to screw things up. Bill Cosby recommends that when you forget why you entered a room, you simply back out and walk back in again. This sometimes works. I tell my family that my declining powers of recall are a boon to them as I can enjoy the same jokes over and over. This works less often. You must hone compensating skills, like searching for that bored look in your spouse's eyes to alert you that you are repeating yourself. This rarely works.


I have forgotten the names of friends' spouses and children hundreds of times. I now understand why my parents had so many acquaintances called "whatshisname." Big social occasions become gauntlets as people whose names I've forgotten greet me by mine. When I do remember someone's name I sing it out proudly — and then later cringe at the thought that I may have gotten it wrong anyway. I wish I could wear a sign around my neck at times like these. It would say roughly the following: "Please don't take it personally that I cannot remember your name. I can list the last several articles you've written that I particularly enjoyed or the talk you gave at whatever that was broadcast on C-SPAN. But names are my nemesis!"


There are other dismaying aspects of middle age, but there are also major compensations. Truly. George Bernard Shaw (at least I think I remember that it was Shaw) famously quipped that "Youth is wasted on the young." One great aspect of getting older is that you gradually shed your self-consciousness. To quote Cher's character in "Moonstruck," you "get over yourself." Young people are in perpetual fear of being embarrassed, of saying or doing or wearing the wrong thing. They are burdened by an exaggerated feeling of conspicuousness. We middle-aged people get to the point of not caring so much about the opinions of others. We know that most of the time people are too wrapped up in themselves to even notice or care what we may be doing. And if they do take notice and judge us harshly, who cares? Suddenly little old ladies in tennis shoes make perfect sense.


So fear not. While the mental decline may begin at 23, the serenity kicks in later.

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