I know that as we age we tend to forget. Some forgetfulness seems to encompass all older adults. Just mention your memory problems around your peers and you get all kinds of stories; forgetting where you put your keys, forgetting why you walked to another room in the house, forgetting the name of an acquaintance, stopping at the end of the driveway to remember where you are going. A lot of this I am told is because older adults have mastered the art of cruise control. So little catches us by surprise that we literally coast through the day on auto-pilot.
But let me ask you....is it normal to be taking a shower and all of a sudden you are standing there looking clueless because you can't remember which body parts you have washed? You reach up and feel your hair to see if you have shampoo in your hair, none there, so you assume you are farther along. For the life of me I couldn't figure it out so I just started all over again! I hope I got everything washed, but who knows? I hope I didn't stay in the shower an extremely long time, but who knows? I hope this hasn't happened before, but who knows?
Maybe that's why so many of us older folk talk to ourselves. It's not always because we want to converse with someone intelligent and funny. It's because we hope we are listening to ourselves so when we ask ourselves "now, what was I doing? now, where was I going? now, who is this?, now, what did I come in here to get?" that we will know the answer and answer ourselves.
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