MOCK ON, MOCK ON, ‘TIS ALL IN VAIN:

From go-go to ga-ga (Margaret Wente, The Globe and Mail, 28/02/04)

My girlfriends and I often wonder if we're going gaga. Although our minds are razor-sharp, we've noticed that we suffer from increasingly alarming lapses. The other day I left behind the $500 I had just extracted from the cash machine. I zipped in and out of there with such efficiency that I didn't even miss my money until the day after, when I reached into my pleasantly fat wallet and found nothing but a wad of old grocery-store receipts.

It's comforting to blame these mental slips on overtasking. We lead busy, busy lives, and our brains are buzzing with big ideas and too much to do. We've got lots of weighty matters on our minds — global warming, government corruption, whether Calphalon cookware is better than All-Clad, and how soon Barbara might leave Conrad now that he might go down the tubes. No wonder we occasionally find ourselves in the middle of the Staples store and can't remember why we're there.

But secretly, I know that overtasking's not to blame for this depressing deterioration of our faculties. Turning 50 is to blame. That's when the laws of entropy kick in with a vengeance. Around the time you find that first stout hair sprouting from your chin, you begin to lose your glasses when they're sitting on your own head. After you turn 50, it is dangerous to think about more than one thing at a time. If you do, you will drive right past your own street on the way home from work, the one where you've lived for 15 years.

Permit me a short, self-regarding moment. The other day I left the courthouse so excited about my brilliant victory in a bitter motion that I forgot my boots, but not my coat beside them. I was going to retrieve them yesterday, but I forgot. Beneficent science assures me and my Boomer colleagues excitedly that there is no reason we can’t break all-time longevity records and be productive members of society well into our seniorities. I sure hope I’ll be able to find the office.