Now in my seventies (65 plus shipping and handling), I have begun to notice that my short-term memory is beginning, here and there, to fail me. When I was still teaching high school classes (years ago), I was able to learn and remember thirty names during my first meeting with any class of new students and to learn at first introduction, the names of all the guests at a dinner or cocktail party. Now I’ve begun to have trouble remembering more than six names at a time. It’s almost as though the little neurons in my brain are encountering more and more signposts that say, “Detour” or “Road Closed.”
This morning I phoned the veterinarian’s office to order more of Dudley’s special dog food and heartworm preventative. The receptionist was new, introducing herself as “Robin,” but in about six seconds my Etch-A-Sketch brain had already erased her name, even though I have a dear friend named “Robbin.” I apologized for having to ask that she repeat her name and was grateful not to be dealing with my request in person, where she would see me blushing from embarrassment.
It’s funny to me that I can recall, verbatim, long passages of poetry from fifty years ago and phone numbers from my childhood more than sixty years ago, but my short-term memory seems lately to be deserting me at those inopportune moments when I’m dealing with folks in person or over the phone, where a memory glitch can be as obvious as an old jalopy parked next to a Maserati. I don’t really mind my hair having turned silver, but I do hate my first meetings with people to create the impression that my “upper floor” is not completely furnished for having a power of recollection shorter than a school teacher’s summer vacation.
I do several crossword puzzles daily, read voluminously, and have rich and varied conversations with friends on topics from literature to current events. I do laps in the swimming pool daily and have a healthy diet, but despite my efforts, there are still instances regarding short-term memory (forgetting why I went from one room to another) that make me feel as though I’m at least two sandwiches shy of a picnic. Those are the painful moments that leave me, at least temporarily (soon to be forgotten) with a hopeless kind of hope, like leaving the porch light on for Jimmy Hoffa. Now who was he again? JB
About John
About John
John Bolinger was born and raised in Northwest Indiana, where he attended Ball State University and Purdue University, receiving his BS and MA from those schools. Then he taught English and French for thirty-five years at Morton High School in Hammond, Indiana before moving to Colorado, where he resided for ten years before moving to Florida. Besides COME SEPTEMBER, Journey of a High School Teacher, John's other books are ALL MY LAZY RIVERS, an Indiana Childhood, and COME ON, FLUFFY, THIS AIN'T NO BALLET, a Novel on Coming of Age, all available on Amazon.com as paperbacks and Kindle books. Alternately funny and touching, COME SEPTEMBER, conveys the story of every high school teacher’s struggle to enlighten both himself and his pupils, encountering along the way, battles with colleagues, administrators, and parents through a parade of characters that include a freshman boy for whom the faculty code name is “Spawn of Satan,” to a senior girl whose water breaks during a pop-quiz over THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS. Through social change and the relentless march of technology, the human element remains constant in the book’s personal, entertaining, and sympathetic portraits of faculty, students, parents, and others. The audience for this book will certainly include school teachers everywhere, teenagers, parents of teens, as well as anyone who appreciates that blend of humor and pathos with which the world of public education is drenched. The drive of the story is the narrator's struggle to become the best teacher he can be. The book is filled with advice for young teachers based upon experience of the writer, advice that will never be found in college methods classes.
Another of John's recent books is Mum's the Word: Secrets of a Family. It is the story of his alcoholic father and the family's efforts to deal with or hide the fact. Though a serious treatment of the horrors of alcoholism, the book also entertains in its descriptions of the father during his best times and the humor of the family's attempts to create a façade for the outside world. All John's books are available as paperbacks and Kindle readers on Amazon, and also as paperbacks at Barnes & Noble. John's sixth book is, Growing Old in America: Notes from a Codger was released on June 15, 2014. John’s most recent book is a novel titled Resisting Gravity, A Ghost Story, published the summer of 2018
View all posts by John →
