My New ABCs: Aging Brain Calisthenics

For those of you who have either not reached qualifying age (50), or brazenly chosen not to join the 38-million-member-strong American Association of Retired Persons (AARP), there’s one thing you should know about them: they really like sending me emails.

In fact, and I am not making this up even though I would, as I finished that last paragraph I checked my email and, shock and alarm, got one from something called AARP Staying Sharp headlined “Exercise for Better Memory and Mood.” What’s that you say? Increasing blood flow and oxygen delivery is good for the brain? Right, and next you’ll tell me John Thune isn’t a cyborg and Selena Gomez Oreos don’t contain 5% by volume her dead skin cells.

There’s a tab in the email with the subhead “There’s No Bad Exercise.” Again I have questions. First, really? You’re telling tens of millions of people, all of them over 50, some of them (gasp!) over 60 that there’s NO bad exercise? How about algae-slicked rock climbing, volcano biking, and chainsaw juggling? Or senior sumo wrestling, HOV lane parkour, and open-door helicopter yoga?

But I took a quick and worthless look at their missive because my short-term memory—never a top ten strength—has had a rough go of late. I’ve gone from forgetting the reason for my journey from the living room to the kitchen immediately upon reaching my destination, to getting a really good thought and losing it in the time it takes to get to my Notes app. And so, went my thinking, why not ride the big grey Boomer wave and find a class to resharpen my recall? Then I remembered I don’t like people telling me what to do, especially in benign, self-improvement settings. Besides, instead I could surf over to the big DIY wave and come up with my own cranial calisthenics, which would undoubtedly be better than those crafted by actual doctors with decades of experience. So I devised a list of mental exercises designed specifically for the mall-walking and chair aerobics universe, but which have obvious cradle to grave value. Watch your head, it’s coming in hot.

The New Name Game. This involves switching up the customary order of your couple friends’ names. Like most yoked folks, my wife’s and my names have been sequenced by all as Peggy and Jonathan—never Jonathan and Peggy. I have over the years attributed this phenomenon to language rhythm and our eternal search for optimal constancy, meaning we’re happier when people always say the same shit the same way. I have also detected a moderate gender bias in favor of a female-first construct, but I need way more data to trot a theory like that out. Switching couples’ names when they arise is like a set of burpees for your brain, but you must do it 24/7 for a week to get solid benefits, two weeks if you’re underly chatty. For an added boost, pretend you’re having a party for all your friends and transpose all of the couples’ names, but feel free to uninvite those you struggle with.

Pronoun Jenga. Have someone you’ve known for decades and are still close to change their pronouns. Our eldest fairly recently changed pronouns from she to they, and after 31 years and millions of mentions, I’m struggling with the transition. Fortunately, as I wrote in a past piece, they are the most empathetic mammal I’ve ever encountered, so much so they would laugh instead of taking offense at my admission that “she” inhabited my first attempt at typing this sentence. Still, practice makes better.

Recall Romp. Run through your house or apartment at an unsafe speed, flinging your most important items—phone, wallet, keys, passport, breath mints, ear buds, etc.—into corners of various rooms as you go. When you’re done, go outside, sit down and turn your thoughts to compiling a list of the five greatest moments in your life. Think really hard and try to revisit them as vividly as you can. Do this for at least 15 minutes, then go back inside and try to put your life back together.

Long Live Rock. I just found out that Yes, whose 1971 eponymous debut was one of my first and favorite albums, is playing a concert at The Villages. This disturbed me until I realized it’s likely they all live there now. For this exercise, think of the first concert you went to, and see if you can name all surviving band members. Repeat with other bands you loved as a youth. No fair checking the “Dead or Alive” website until you’re truly stumped. For extra credit, name the band who hit #54 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1979 with the song this entry is named for.

Cabinet Carousel. Overfill your dishwasher with as many and varied items as possible, and start its cycle. Then, rearrange all your kitchen cabinets, and immediately go away for the weekend. Come back and see how long it takes you to correctly empty the dishwasher, but don’t rush—there’s glass and other sharp stuff in there.

Olympic Kiester-Kissing. This one is only for advanced practitioners of these ABCs. I can’t be responsible for what might happen if you don’t work your way up to this. So if you dare, watch a Trump cabinet meeting in its entirety. As the individual secretaries, who are responsible for providing leadership for and services to all 340 million Americans, try to get their heads farther and farther up his bulbous orange butt, rank them in real time in terms of unvarnished obsequiousness and ass-smoochery. When it’s over, see if you can write them down in the order you ranked them. Watch it again to see how well you did. Then watch seven episodes of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood—the only proven antidote to the experience—but avoid the first season, which was in black and white. You’ve been disturbed enough.

Initial Reversal. Apologies for another Trump-inspired entry, but I was watching his “conversation” in Texas about the recent horrific floods, and he correctly pronounced “Coast Guard,” then called it the “Post Card” before reaching the coveted “two out of three ain’t bad” threshold. Your challenge is to transpose the first letters of any common two-word phrase or name, then transpose them back. Repeat as often and with as many phrases as quickly as possible until you either pass out or bite your tongue.

Dwarf U-Turn. Try to memorize the names of all Seven Dwarfs in backwards alphabetical order and then practice saying them that way until you can do it really really fast. I learned to do this one night while drunk and stoned in college, and because 1) I did it way back then and 2) it’s pretty useless, I’ll never forget how to do it.

Harmonic Divergence. Try to sing harmony to every song on your playlist. If you can’t sing harmony, find two partners and sing rounds for an hour. Start with kid classics like “Row, Row, Row Your Boat” and “Kookaburra,” and work your way up to Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” and Queen’s “We Will Rock You.”

Memorizing Minnie. When Alison was little, they loved a series of Minnie Mouse books. None of them were a threat to Dr. Seuss, but they were mostly inoffensive, except for a wrinkle Alison added. Minnie had seven friends in the stories—Daisy Duck, Clarabelle Cow, Penny Pooch, Patti Pony, T.J. Turtle, Heather Hippo, and Lilly Lamb—and Alison strongly preferred that you insert their name and the names of seven of their friends instead, and barked lovingly at you when—not if, as back then I was sloppily sleep-deprived—you screwed up. For this exercise, find a volume in the Minnie ‘n Me: Best Friends Collection—I’m partial to I Want to Win—at your favorite bookseller, and read it to your most demanding/annoying friend or relative, using their desired names instead of the above anthropomorphic adorables. Have Advil handy.

That should keep all of you busy for now. If you’re anything like me—which I think there’s a pill for now—you long ago realized your brain can be your best friend and worst enemy. I find this stage of cerebral life fascinating, as while recall is more challenging and details often disappear, the ride mine takes me on is wilder, farther afield, and more interesting than ever before. Of course, I do all of the above exercises daily.