You Should Try Something New Too

 

As I woke up from my afternoon slumber, I remembered the good advice I had been receiving from friends and family, who all claimed to have my best interests at heart.

“As you get older your mind will most likely deteriorate a little, but you can substantially slow that process by staying active socially, mentally, and physically.”

Writing a weekly post for this blog will keep me alert. I therefore grabbed my laptop and started typing with my two clumsy index fingers, making numerous mistakes, as usual. 

Correcting my mistakes

 

 Why can’t I type like every normal person in the world? I can offer no excuse other than growing up before they started teaching it in school. I did learn to speak three languages, and Dutch which happened to be my mother tongue. No typing at all. Typists learn to type and all my working life I was accustomed to handing my scribbled notes to one of those clever ladies and they mostly made sense of it all and typed it up nicely.

I even had a secretary at one stage of my life and remember well how she used to complain about my atrocious spelling. I don’t think it is all that bad and do pretty well with a little help from an array of spell checkers.

So, this afternoon I decided I might as well do something constructive for my aging brain, and teach myself a new skill. I wanted to learn to type with all my fingers and soon found out that both my brain and my arthritic fingers are too old for that shit.  A couple of them are twisting sideways and seem to have decided they are fed up with my instructions. By the way, today was the first time I was made aware of the little bumps on the f and j keys. Never noticed them before. I know, I’m a hopeless case of over the hill…

Not quite that old

 

Being a stubborn old bastard, I did not give up until my dear wife, Lea, asked me why I didn’t just dictate my text to Braina. “Braina who?” Braina, the dictation program. You pay much less than for a secretary, download, and Bob’s your uncle. 

I tried Braina, but she had a problem with my accent and besides, I like stabbing away at my keyboard with my crooked old fingers. They were good enough for the books I wrote, and apart from a little swimming, it’s the only exercise I get.

Trying something new is good for us old folks though, and I hope you take me seriously when I suggest you do more than just watch your favorite soap shows.

Perhaps take yoga lessons or sign up for a course at the local community college. It doesn’t matter what, as long as it challenges your mind—a foreign language, mathematics, philosophy, or diplomacy. 

You can also teach yourself to play an instrument. That’s what I did and two years ago at eighty-seven, I bought myself a cheap Chinese saxophone. I have been torturing that poor thing for two years now and taught myself to read music. I even manage to play a couple of tunes now. Not very well, but my dog has stopped howling when I play nowadays and according to Lea, my tootering is quite bearable, provided she’s wearing her earplugs. 

Please stop playing that infernal saxophone

 

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