The other day as I was leaving the fitness center after working out, I took the towel that they give you when you enter, pulled my bathing suit out and tossed it into the towel container as I walked to my car to drive away with their towel. I almost got to my car.
 
“Oh yeah, what the heck am I doing?” I turned around, made a joke to the attendant, went to the towel depository, took my bathing suit out and tossed the towel in. Now I could go home.

If you are like me, this type of incident has probably happened to you. With age, this seems to happen more often. Throw one thing where the other thing is supposed to go.
 
Many years ago, there was a humorous British clip of an older woman entering her home. She puts her keys down, then sees the plants wilting, so she decides to water them. Then she looks at the mail and forgets where her keys are. She puts her glasses down to look for her keys, and when she finds them, she can’t remember where her glasses are. And so on. You get the point.

She dithers around, losing her brain. The title of the clip is something to the effect of, “This is why you feel tired and nothing ever gets done.” We get distracted. We place things without thinking. We forget.
 
One of my all-time favorites, which I like to admit because it’s so damn funny and shows our humanity, is when I’m done eating cereal. That means it’s time to put the milk in the pantry and the cereal box in the refrigerator. Seriously, I can’t count the amount of times I’ve either done that or come extremely close to doing that. I whack myself on the forehead with an open palm and go, “Dude, what are you thinking?”
 
This is mostly about not paying attention. We go on automatic pilot.
 
Just today, after eating lunch, I put the lettuce in the drawer where we normally keep cheese and meat and put the cheese and turkey in the lettuce drawer in the frig. Didn’t even know I did it until dinner when I went to make us salads for dinner, and I open the lettuce drawer, “Where the heck is the lettuce? Oh yeah, I bet I know what I did.” And, of course, I did. Reverse where things should go.

Knowing this about yourself and your personality and forgetfulness is good. You learn from it. After the cheese/lettuce debacle, I said to myself afterwards, “Now, REMEMBER, the next time you can’t find the lettuce or cheese to look in the other container. You probably misplaced it.” That’s a good reminder to teach you where to find things. Look at places where you tend to put things where they don’t belong.

To make this syndrome useful, you must first recognize it in yourself. Then commit to memory the goofy thing you did which didn’t make any sense. Then focus on that until it makes sense and you can find those things you need to find.
 
When our kids were young, one of my favorite phrases to help them find something they thought they’d lost was, “Retrace your steps.” If you can’t develop your own system for proper and safe placement of materials, you can always use that as your fallback. It works. And, maybe if you video yourself, you can take on the Brits with a humorous take on how forgetful many of us are.

​I have to write about this topic. I’ve raised it with numerous friends who are in my age bracket. Let’s call that the “post-60 crowd.” You can probably extend that on either end of 60 a bit.
 
The trend has been noticeable for several years, hence the age bracket definition. The issue is: threading your feet through your pants without falling down. Or, to be more realistic, how difficult it is to get your feet through the workout pants, jeans or dress pants, without catching your toes and becoming a contortionist. Why is this?
 
Let’s start with the morning ritual. You get up, do you normal start-of-day things, and at some point meander over to your clothes drawer to pull out a pair of stretch pants you wear to work out in. Simple enough.

They are made of soft fabric. Easily malleable. Ten years ago, you hopped right in and were off.
 
Not so today. Something has happened to turn your toes into clubs. They seem to have become immovable objects, unable to react to the sliding on of the pants with grace. They choose to catch the sides of the long pants and adhere the way thorns do. Stick and stay.
 
This, of course, causes you to lose balance. You stand on one foot. “Okay, this is easy enough.” All of a sudden, your toes are caught on the side of the fabric and you find yourself falling towards the bed. As you topple over, like a tall building that was just dynamited (TIMBER!!!), you put out your arm to catch yourself on the edge of the bed, straining your shoulder and elbow socket, while bellowing at the dog to stop make you lose your balance. Damn dog.
 
Really, it’s about aging and losing flexibility and balance. It’s hard to stand on one foot. Combine that with actually trying to do something while standing on one foot -- like inserting the other foot into a constricted space and making it go where you want it to go intuitively – and you have the coming disaster.

Seriously, I have had this discussion with many people in my age bracket and trying to put on your pants while standing is a significant issue. Why not sit?, you ask. Duh. We do. But it feeds the view of ourselves being old codgers, which we are, but somehow want to not fully label ourselves that way yet. Maybe we’re partial old codgers (POCs).
 
In the OLD days, I would stand up and abra cadabra, shove each foot through in seconds, and off you go. Oh, for those bygone days!
 
When does the syndrome start?  When you turn 59? Is 65 the magic year? I don’t know.
 
All I do know is that this affects everyone I’ve spoken with in this age bracket who is willing to honestly share the difficulties they have with their feet sliding into pants. Us POCs have one more thing to worry about that can lead to head injuries. The AARP needs to get on this and cover the syndrome, along with solutions.
 
We need to develop some form of toe flexibility exercises. Stretch, twist, rotate. That will help, but (sigh), sitting down and acting like a true old codger instead of a POC seems to be the best solution.
 
Now, don’t get me started on pulling your socks off while you’re standing up. That’s doom.

​I like ferries. This has been true for many years.
 
As a young child, I remember taking a ferry across to Martha’s Vineyard. You could smell the ocean, feel the breeze. Even as a kid there was some subconscious pull – watching the world go by, heading from one place to another – that gave me a warm feeling inside.
 
This past week, several members of our family ferried from Rockland, ME to Vinalhaven Island. We planned to e-bike the island. The weather was spectacular – crystal clear, a slight breeze, virtually no ripples in the water.
 
Setting off, you watch the world fall behind. I think that is part of the pull – the sense of watching the terrain recede, and then the anticipation of heading off to someplace new and worth exploring.
 
Us humans are explorers. I think ferries play to that. We prepare for the unknown, riding along, pondering what’s coming next. We anticipate. It feels good.
 
At the same time, you take in images of the world going slowly by. That is another big reason ferries hit my nostalgia button. You’re not catapulting around in a gasoline-fired engine, hurtling through stop lights, in traffic, worrying, paying strict attention to everything so that you stay safe. In that environment, you don’t appreciate the views, the surroundings outside your vehicle.

On a ferry, it’s all about what’s outside the boat. You’re watching birds, checking for porpoises or puffins or whales. You watch the fir trees sway in the wind. Seagulls ride the wind currents and you marvel at their ability to coast without flapping their wings. How far can they glide? Seaweed swirls in the water below. You smell salt and fish.
 
Back in 1982, when I bicycled across North America, I slowed down and ferried through the San Juan Islands off the coast of Washington state. It was bucolic, a pause in my trek that allowed me to step back and drink the Pacific Northwest environment. What a rush.
 
Last year, our son set up a ferry ride from Milwaukee across Lake Michigan to Muskegon for an annual golf outing we hold with his cousins and my brothers. We left very early in the morning. As land receded, it kicked off the start of a voyage, one that not only included the boat ride, but what was to come later in the week as we golfed, sat around the fire pit, shared stories and decompressed from life’s worries.
 
A ferry contributes to that feeling. Somehow you are released. You’re not the driver, so you can let go of those concerns. You can roam the boat, park your butt where you get the best views or just hang in the fresh air, breathing through your nose the smells wafting across the water.
 
A ferry means a change of scenery. You’re going somewhere, letting go and moving forward.
 
“Slow down, you’re movin’ too fast. Gotta make the mornin’ last.” Ride the ferry.