BDY VS BRAIN

You wouldn’t expect to have an awakening (I hesitate to call it a revelation or an epiphany) in the hill country of Texas – but I did. Visiting my daughter and her husband, and our three grandsons in Austin, I stumbled across a book that promises a “6 step age-defying program!” (Exclamation point mine.).

There is not a lot to do, so my wife and I fall back on our obsession: crossword puzzles. We read a lot, and I bought an electronic keyboard so I could practice every day. In other words, we continue to exercise our brains.
Let me back up. One of the axioms for a happy retirement is fitness – fitness of body and fitness of mind. If that sounds like the beginning of a Sunday homily – you’ll have to forgive me.

In my book “Don’t Be Blindsided by Retirement” I remind you that taking physical stock of yourself is imperative. A visit to your doctor for a complete evaluation of your body (you’’ have to go elsewhere for your mind) is essential. It is simply “taking stock.”
But just as important of course, is fitness of mind. It has long been believed that you can ward off or at least retard, the mental dysfunction that accompanies aging with mental exercise – hence the crosswords and the piano lessons and the reading...

I go through dozens of puzzles every day from the almost unlimited collection of New York Times puzzle books. The daily puzzles are smaller and start on Monday with an easy one but by Saturday are so difficult you are close to despair. But you solder on, lubricating the brain. You hope.

Barnes and Noble have the best selection. That is where is stumbled across “Crosswords to Keep Your Brain Young, edited by Will Storz with advice from Majid Fatuhi M.D. PhD.of the Lifebridge Health Brain and Spine Institute at Harvard.
Wow! Proof at last that I can push back brain decay with puzzles. But the good doctors has much more to say from mnemonics to brain and vocabulary exercise.

He reminds us that “each of the 100 billion cells in the human brain has the capacity to grow. The brain’s capacity is endless.” He really gets to me with this: “It was once assumed that learning was limited to children. New studies indicate that indeed old dogs can learn new tricks.” You can, he says “soak up new skills.”

Nothing is more perilous to me at least, that the trip into memory loss. When I sat down to write this piece, I had to stop and ask my wife (who always comes up with the answers) what the word for sudden revelation – like Paul on the road to Damascus – and of course she snapped it out like a twenty year old,

I still have more Doctor Fatuhi to read and he will tell me how to expand my range of knowledge, increase my vocabulary, and remember people’s names.

Which should bring me to a funny ending. My career as a gag writer (I’m serious) is over.