By Ed Garcia
I am two years into my eighties, so naturally, my thoughts and conversations often turn to aging and the next thing that happens after aging. For no good reason, this has led me to think about my electric toothbrush. I don’t leave the toothbrush in its charging cradle (a lovely term), but use it until it begins to blink red to tell me it needs to be recharged. My sense is that over time the charge has begun to last shorter and shorter times. It’s a gradual descent, nothing alarming, but the downward trajectory does suggest a certain inevitability. This puts me in mind of another downward trajectory—my own.
I can remember when I could get out of a chair without the double or triple pump it takes now.
There was a time when getting down on the floor to look under a bed or work on plumbing under the sink happened without a thought. And getting up was natural and immediate, not a matter of looking around for something up pull up on. I remember when if I saw something on the floor, I would lean down and pick it up, without thinking. Now it’s not unusual for things to linger on the floor for hours, even days, before I can get myself to pick them up. I used to laugh about the ad showing the old woman crying out, “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up.” The joke, I’m afraid, is on me and mine these days.
And the decline isn’t just physical. There’s also the problem of names. “What’s his (or her) name?” is a big part of my vocabulary. These days, I find it takes a village (or at least a group of friends on Zoom) to come up with a name sometimes. I have no problem coming up with Clark Gable’s costar in 1935’s “Mutiny on the Bounty” (Franchot Tone or Charles Laughton, take your pick), but the name of someone I just met or just read about might be completely unavailable. It can be scary when one of those blank spots presents itself. Yesterday, I had trouble coming up with John McCain’s name. McCabe? McSomething? This isn’t dementia, I hope, but something I share with many of my 80 + year old friends. And, in a way, with my electric toothbrush.
The other day, my toothbrush just stopped dead, without the warning flashing red light. But, hey, it’s just a metaphor. Isn’t it?