I knew it

Scientists find that people who are cheerful and optimistic tend to die younger.

Researchers in the Longevity Project studied 1,500 bright children who were around 10 years old when the study began in 1921. They found, over the subjects' lifetimes, that happy-go-lucky types took more risks with their health, trusting that everything would turn out fine.

Prudent, persistent types tended to live longer and be healthier, the researchers found.

Full story here.

(Thanks to Bill Crider for the link.)

The Aging of Aquarius

According to the calendar, I’m getting happier every day.

The mirror tells me I’m well on my way to contentment. If you believe my white whiskers, I’m downright delirious.

I base these conclusions on a study that shows that people tend to be happier as they get older.

The University of Chicago research project, led by a sociologist named Yang Yang (really), involved periodic interviews with 28,000 people between 1972 and 2004. Overall happiness levels tended to go up and down with good and bad economic times, but older Americans always reported being the happiest age group.

“The good news is that with age comes happiness,” Yang told The Associated Press. “Life gets better in one’s perception as one ages.”

Older people typically have learned to be content with what life has given them, Yang said. In general, the study found, the odds of being happy rose 5 percent with every 10 years of age.

Most Americans reported being “very happy” or “pretty happy” at every age. But a third of those aged 88 reported feeling very happy, compared to only 24 percent of 18-year-olds, the study said.

(What’s most amazing is that researchers found any 18-year-olds who admitted they were “very happy.” I assume the respondents were drunk.)

A separate University of Chicago study found that one reason people in their golden years tend to be happier is that they’re more socially active.

That study found that 75 percent of people aged 57 to 85 engage in one or more social activities each week. Such activities include visiting with neighbors, attending religious services, volunteering or going to group meetings, the AP article said.

Those in their 80s were twice as likely as those in their 50s to do at least one of those activities, the study found.

That’s because people in their 50s (like me) are too danged busy to keep up social connections as we should. Between careers, household chores, family responsibilities and Facebook, we find we’re pretty much booked solid.

Yang’s study found that baby boomers were the least happy group. Naturally. Many of us boomers are still in that stressful mid-life period, and we’ve generally been a bunch of whiners since the get-go.

Researchers say baby boomers haven’t learned to lower our expectations as we get older. We still want it all, even in retirement, and we’re not into the whole growing-old-gracefully thing. This attitude explains many boomer foibles, including annual gym memberships, plastic surgery, “working vacations” and Viagra.

Unless we learn to let go of our achievement-oriented mindsets and accept that life will never be perfect, the researchers said, we boomers could end up as sad, lonely senior citizens. There’s a happy thought.

I plan to embrace getting older. I’ll practice being content. I’ll tamp down my ambitions and try to accept life as it comes. I’ll drive slower and go to bed earlier. I’ll stop throwing away those “invitations” to join AARP.

Most of all, I plan to develop some social connections. I’ll have to rearrange my schedule, but I think I can free up an hour on Thursday afternoons.

Look out, happiness, here I come.

Keeping up with the upkeep

Having recently “celebrated” the passing of another birthday, I’ve given much thought lately to aging.

I’ve decided it’s not impending mortality that makes getting older so hard to take. It’s not the decline in vitality and possibility. The worst part of aging is all the damn maintenance.

Talk about a paradox. We have less life ahead of us with every passing day, but more and more of our dwindling time is spent on caring for our faces and our bodies and our overall health. By the time we take our final breaths, we’re ready to die, just so we can stop fussing with our hair.

It’s so much easier for the young. I watch my sons get ready for school in the morning and marvel at how little effort is required. They roll out of bed, throw on some clothes from the array on the floor, shovel in some breakfast, and they’re ready to go. They barely give the mirror a glance. They’re teens, they’re male, they assume they look fine.

If pressed, I can still do the quick shower and dress and out-the-door in fifteen minutes. (What we call around here “sliding down the Batpole.”) But most mornings require that more attention be paid to the mirror.

We aging men have skin spots to study, wrinkles to sigh over, gray whiskers to shave. The hair on our heads may get thinner, but stray hair pops up in strange places -- our eyebrows, our ears, our shoulders. Fallen hair apparently migrates while we sleep until it finds new and more interesting places to attach. These migratory hairs must be addressed. Throw in a beard, like I wear, and you can easily snip, snip away the entire morning.

(An aside to those men who sport bushy, spidery eyebrows: Dudes, buy some scissors. Really. It’s not funny anymore.)

When I was young, I gave no thought to working out. I got enough exercise shooting hoops and chasing women. I couldn’t gain weight if I tried. Now, I work out every day, and I’ve never been plumper. You’d think the fat would smooth out the wrinkles, but no . . .

Age weakens our eyes, loosens our teeth, flattens our arches, broadens our backsides. Remedial action is required at every turn, and it‘s all so time-consuming.

If personal upkeep is a hassle for men, it’s a hundred times worse for women. Society puts more pressure on women to look their youthful best, but every wrinkle and sag is a reminder of futility. No wonder they spend so much on cosmetics and hair dye and magnifying mirrors and Botox. No wonder it takes them longer to get ready in the morning. No wonder they resent their hairy, slovenly husbands.

As the years pile on, the physical maintenance becomes too much for us to handle alone. We seek professional help -- doctors and dentists and cosmetologists and manicurists and plastic surgeons and personal trainers. We spend our golden years wandering from one waiting room to another, trying to maintain our health and our teeth and what little looks we’ve got left.

Having an aging body is like owning an old car. Lots of dents and dings and strange noises. A little leakage now and then. Too much time in the shop, and we can’t rely on the old clunker the way we once did. But as long as it keeps running, we’ll keep on driving.

We’ve still got many miles to go.

Hello, my name is . . . I forget

The world would be a better place, filled with less animosity and anxiety, if we all wore name tags.

Cocktail parties, school events and church services wouldn't be so nerve-wracking if everyone wore the simple first-name-only badges typically worn at business conventions -- "Hello! My name is ILLEGIBLE SCRAWL."

Name badges would have many benefits to society, but the main reason for adopting such a system is this: I can't remember anybody's name anymore.

This could be a side effect of working alone at home. When I was reporter, out in the world, meeting people all the time, I was pretty good at putting names with faces. Now, I can't even recall the names of close relations, such as my children.

(This forgetfulness could also be a product of advancing age, but let's not go there.)

Though I work mostly in solitude, I sometimes go out in public for conventions and bookstore appearances. Also, my wife often drags me along to public events as "arm candy."

During these outings, I shake hands with many, many people and introduce myself each time. They say their names back, and I smile and nod, recognizing that I'm lost. The exchange has barely cleared my ears, but my brain already has filed the names in the overflowing trash bin of the forgotten.

This instantaneous forgetfulness requires that I fall back on deception and guile. Here's my guilty secret: Whenever I'm out in public, I call all the women "darlin'" and all the men "buddy" or "partner," as in "Hello, darlin'," or "Hey there, partner, how ya been?" This makes me appear friendly and casual, instead of a "space case" who can't recall the names of those he met as recently as one minute earlier.

At events where people wear name badges, I'm not forced to resort to such trickery. We all go around staring at each other's chests, but at least we avoid embarrassing name mistakes, such as calling a woman "Bill." Not that I've ever done that.

We should adopt name badges nationwide. We could bypass the sticky temporary badges in favor of fancy embroidery, such as you'll find on the shirts of bowlers and mechanics.

(I've noticed that the great majority of such shirts say, "Larry.")

Wouldn't life be less tense if we were all on a first-name basis? Wouldn't we be happier without the fear of forgetting the names of important people, such as our bosses? Wouldn't the loss of anonymity make us behave ourselves?

("Yes, officer, now that you mention it, the bank robber was wearing a shirt with his name on it. Put out an APB for someone named Larry.")

So, come on, America. Run right out and get some name badges. It's the one sure way for us all to get universal recognition. Someday, we'll know each other on sight, and we'll always get the names right.

Until that grand day arrives, I'll call you "darlin'" or "partner."

You can call me "Larry."

Boom, you're older

We Baby Boomers have always embraced youthfulness, but it's becoming harder to cling to it with each passing year. Despite all our efforts to look young and stay in shape, we're losing our grip.

Of course, we won't admit it. We're a nation of Peter Pans, muttering "I'll never grow up" all the way to the grave.

This attitude results in such nonsense as a recent magazine headline that said, "Sixty is the new 40." Apparently, we can treat aging as a fashion statement, like saying, "Brown is the new black," when we all know black is black and brown is brown and our hair would be gray if we didn't touch it up.

"Middle age" has become a moving target. Nobody wants to go past middle age because that would mean admitting that we're over the hill, being dragged downward by gravity until we reach six feet under. So we Baby Boomers simply push back the process, declaring that we're not "old" until we're past, say, 106.

Now that the youngest of the Baby Boomers have passed 40, however, perhaps it's time to take another look at aging and its symptoms. You're getting older if:

--The hair that once resided on top of your head has relocated to unseemly neighborhoods, such as your ears, nose or back.

--You have to sit down to see which shoes you're wearing.

--Everyone you meet in your daily life -- doctor, dentist, barber, business associates, plastic surgeon, personal trainer -- seems younger than you. (I recently was on a plane where the flight crew was introduced as "Captain Chad and Co-pilot Jason." I'm sorry, but those names belong to people riding skateboards, not piloting airplanes. This made me a very nervous passenger, but Chad did fine until the landing, which was "radical, dude.")

--In clothing, you surrender style for comfort. Think Birkenstocks rather than spike heels. Think "relaxed fit." Think "elastic."

--You're more concerned with bifocals than with biceps.

--You prefer music that's "soothing" rather than music that "ROCKS."

--You spill on yourself when you eat. (All my garments seem to bear ketchup stains. I'll soon be out of "nice" clothes. They're dropping like fries.)

--You prefer to watch sports rather than participate in them. Ideally, you can watch these sports without leaving the comfort of your sofa and nearby refrigerator.

--You think golf is a sport.

--You hire someone to do the sweaty physical labor in your yard, so you have more time to "jog."

--You pursue no activity that bears the risk of physical injury. Or, if you do, you approach it with careful deliberation. (This is why senior citizens drive so slowly.) And yet you're always hurting yourself some way.

--When reading a newspaper, you turn first to the stock market pages and the obituaries. And groan over them both.

--One word: Prunes.

--You spend an inordinate amount of time fretting over your teeth.

--Your train of thought has left the station. You sometimes have trouble thinking of the right, uh, you know, um, WORD. You spend several minutes a day standing motionless, asking yourself, "Why did I come in here?"

--The only bad habit you have left is boasting about how you gave up all your bad habits.

If these symptoms sound like you, then you're probably middle-aged, at least. But don't worry, you don't have to get old. We're all in this together. We Boomers will keep stretching out the middle to encompass all of us.

Remember: Eighty is the new 40. Or, maybe it's twice as good. Or something. I can't remember. Why did I come in here again?

Waking dead

Here's a statement you rarely hear a young person make: "I slept wrong."

The average college kid can pass out at 3 a.m., sprawled over a beer keg, naked, one leg bent at a 120-degree angle, both arms tucked firmly under his back, and his nose packed full of shaving cream that's slowly hardening into concrete. He'll bounce up from this night of hazing and raucous behavior, after snoozing for 12 straight hours, and he'll be fresh as a daisy. Ask him how he slept, and he'll say, "Great!"

"Sleeping wrong" is the province of us older folks, the ones in middle age and beyond. I can turn in for the night at 9 p.m., spend the next eight hours in perfect sleeping conditions, and still wake up looking and moving like the Elephant Man.

I stumble into the kitchen, desperate for coffee, all my joints creaking, my body wracked by mysterious pains, my hair plastered into a rooster's comb, and the conversation goes like this:

Wife: "My God, what happened to you?"

Me: "I slept wrong."

The paradox here is that those of us who are older have had much more practice at sleeping. Years and years of it. We should be darned good at it by now. But, once in a while, we "sleep wrong" anyway, and we awaken to find the evidence. Aches and pains. One leg suddenly shorter than the other. One whole side of the body flattened like the bottom of a Hershey's Kiss.

We need the sleep more than youngsters do. Dozens of studies have shown that American adults go around sleep-deprived all the time. We're too busy to spend enough time in bed. And, once we're there, worries and physical ailments and nightmares and snoring interfere with proper rest. Add in the occasional night of "sleeping wrong" and it's no wonder we're a nation of zombies.

I expect sleep-deprivation to soon become a popular defense strategy in court, right up there with insanity.

Judge: "Sir, you mowed down 17 people with your car before whamming into a light pole. Officers on the scene said you were babbling, unable to control your bodily functions and your hair looked funny. How do you plead?"

Defendant: "I slept wrong."

Judge: "Oh. OK, you're free to go. Try to get some rest."

Sadly, scientists report that sleep problems get worse the older you get. Each passing year makes correct sleeping more difficult. By the time you're in your 80s, there's no point even going to bed.

We in middle age do everything we can to avoid "sleeping wrong." We buy the most comfortable beds, set the household temperature just right, block out all light and noise, try to erase troubling thoughts from our minds. But somewhere along the way, we make a mistake. And, having "slept wrong," we spend all day trying to recuperate and fervently praying that the next night will go better.

Young people, on the other hand, can sleep most anywhere, anytime, including during classes, underwater or while standing up. It's just not fair.

When my sons were younger, they would sometimes sleep on the rock-hard floor "for fun." They'd build a nest of blankets and linens, splay out over some randomly placed pillows, and get a wonderful night of sleep. I think they were showing off.

When I'd find them sleeping peacefully on the floor, I was so envious I was tempted to wake them in some vicious way -- banging pans together like cymbals, ice water, a swift kick.

Child abuse, you say? No problem. I'd just tell the judge, "I slept wrong."

The death of cool

As if looking in the mirror isn't evidence enough, here's another sign of encroaching middle age: The pledges made in our youth become as outdated as eight-track tapes.

We make many promises to ourselves when we're young. We'll never settle down. We'll never give up partying, dude. We'll never get fat. We'll never become couch potatoes or undergo plastic surgery or wear our pants pulled up to our armpits.

Aging subverts those promises. The demands of family and money and work, the incontrovertible proof of wrinkles and flab and gray hair, yank the rug out from under our youthful idealism. And we shrug wearily and trudge toward our ultimate reward, foolhardy pledges littering the road behind us.

When my wife and I decided to get married nearly 25 years ago, we agreed to three private vows beyond the usual "I do." These vows were aimed at making a state-sanctioned union more palatable to a couple of young hipsters. Here they are:

1. No children.

2. No mortgage.

3. No station wagon.

It's not that we looked down our noses at people who liked such things (though we secretly did). We were simply too cool to embrace the suburban, white-bread, gray-flannel-suit, Brady-Bunch, La-Z-Boy, generic-beer, early-to-bed values of previous generations.

Well. Our two sons are now in their late teens. We're in our third house and on our fifth mortgage, counting those all-important, lower-interest-rate refinancings. And, a few years ago, I gave up and bought a minivan.

OK, it's not exactly a station wagon. But it's the modern-day equivalent, close enough to draw sneers from passing youngsters who could never picture themselves tooling around in a vehicle with as much sex appeal as a refrigerator.

Minivans are for people who've given up any pretense of coolness in favor of practicality. For people who need legroom more than they need a hip image. For people who haul people.
In short, minivans are designed for parents.

Parents need reliable transportation, not something exotic that'll pass everything on the road except a repair shop. They need room for kids and pets and sports gear and groceries. They need rows of seats so children can be separated when they start poking each other.

Automobile manufacturers have designed minivans with all the bells-and-whistles demanded by harried parents. Cupholders and airbags. Lots of storage. Entertainment systems to distract the little ones in the back seats so they don't distract the driver.

Ours even has a fisheye mirror that gives the driver a view of the whole interior, so I could watch the kids and shout, "I saw that! Stop poking him!" while pretending to watch the road.

I must confess that I like the minivan. It's roomy, it's practical, it's easy to drive. I ride up high so I can see over sleek little sedans in traffic.

Not high enough, though. I can still see the other drivers, the young ones in the sleek little sedans, who snort at the sight of Mr. Soccer Mom in his Airport Shuttle.

I'm thinking about dressing up the van, giving it some little touch that shows I know I'm no longer cool. Something tongue-in-cheek, a wink to those who scorn fridges-on-wheels and the lifestyle they signify.

How about a vanity plate? Here's what it should say: "AMANA."

Beats the alternative

We're all getting older -- some of us faster than others -- and older folks are slowly taking over the world.

The United Nations convened an assembly a few years ago to study the world's aging population. The UN discovered that, whoa, you can't turn around without bumping into a senior citizen. Particularly at Wal-Mart.

Today, the UN estimates, one of every 10 people is 60 or older -- a total of 629 million people worldwide. By 2050, the UN projects, one in every five will be 60 or older. By 2150, the ratio will be one in three.

These numbers immediately suggest two things:

1) We should run right out and invest in companies that make walkers, adult diapers and Botox. Also, in any restaurant chain that carries a dish called Sunset Senior Value.

2) Traffic will move much slower in years to come. By 2050, it'll take half a day to drive across town.

Beyond those superficial initial reactions lie more serious considerations: How will we provide medical care and housing and snack food for the growing number of senior citizens? And will all those birthday candles intensify global warming?

The UN assembly found that the world's aging population will place great demands on our international society. After much study and discussion, the assembly voted to buckle down and actively do more research on this important issue.

One question they should ask is: How does aging happen so gradually, yet seem to come upon a person all at once? Perhaps we could make better policies about getting older if we weren't so taken by surprise.

One day, you're in your twenties, a party animal. The next, you're a grizzled veteran, telling today's party animals how much fun everyone used to have in the good old days. Before long, you're in a rocking chair, trying to remember the good old days.

It happens so slowly, yet so all of a sudden, that it's difficult for researchers to track.
The physical transformation should be easy to study. For example: When does a man officially reach middle age? When he has to grunt to get up off the sofa. That's a quantifiable phenomenon that could keep highly paid researchers busy for years.

The mental and emotional shifts are harder to measure. Through our middle years, we're all terribly busy with children and careers and homes and ambitions. We don't notice the years slipping away. We wake up one day and we're old.

I recently turned 51. Well into the "grizzled veteran" stage. I'm out of shape. I'm terribly busy with teen-agers, career, etc. My hair's graying. Clerks call me "sir."

I knew I'd reached "middle age" when I noticed all the people I met in daily life -- doctors, dentists, barbers, mechanics, bank tellers, other people in positions of trust and responsibility -- were younger than me.

When I was young, everyone was older and seemed to command respect. Co-workers seemed ancient and wise. I called waitresses "Ma'am," not "Miss." Our family doctor was a gray-haired gent with rimless glasses and twinkly eyes. (He was probably about the age I am now.)

Now, you see doctors so young, they can't remember "Marcus Welby, M.D." from TV. Do I want such a whippersnapper operating on me? What if I show up at the clinic and the doctor is a young hipster with tattoos and a nose ring? The fact that I worry about such things proves I'm getting old.

This younger generation eventually will grow old like the rest of us and they'll undoubtedly be just as surprised. Before you know it, they'll shed their body jewelry and join our aging throng. We creaking oldsters will have the rest of you outnumbered.

Then just try to drive across town. We dare you.

You dropped your pocket

As warmer weather arrives, many of us find ourselves suffering a severe shortage of pockets.

We're very busy people. Mobile. We need pockets for all our stuff as we hurry from place to place. As the slow strip-tease of spring takes us toward the island-castaway summer outfit of swimsuit and tank top and sandals, we have fewer and fewer pockets to go around.

It's a sign of sophisticated simplicity to go around with free hands. If you're not lugging a briefcase and a laptop and a cell phone everywhere you go, it means you've made some good choices in life. You haven't become a slave to business and its machines.

But we all have our stuff. Money. Sunglasses. Certain necessities like car keys that we need handy, yet in a safe place where the dog can't swallow them. And for these items we need pockets.

I travel light, but as I write this, I have the following in my pockets: wallet, comb, keyring, loose change, grocery list, checks and deposit slip for pending trip to the bank, blank paper (in case inspiration strikes), pen and business cards. And that's while I'm sitting here at my desk, phone and coffee cup within easy reach. Imagine if I needed to go outside.

I used to carry a Swiss Army knife, so I always had ready access to a corkscrew. Now there's no room in my pockets for it, so I've had to resign from the Swiss Army. Better not to be packing a knife these days anyway. Never know when you might get patted down.

What about people who carry more stuff? They've got it hanging all over them. Key chains jingling on belts and pagers clipped onto pockets and cell phones holstered on their hips. We're all starting to look like cops, the tools of our trade weighing down our belts.

(I saw a guy in a coffee shop the other day. He had the usual battery of high-tech toys on his belt, threatening to "pants" him, plus he wore a telephone headset and talked loudly as he weaved between tables. I'm thinking: Yeah, yeah, we're all impressed by what an important little businessman you are. But we'd be more impressed if you were so successful, you could afford to take a leisurely, phone-free coffee break.)

Once you pass the dangle limit, you must graduate to a purse or a book bag or a briefcase or a backpack or a llama. And life's responsibilities begin to weigh you down.

A note: Avoid the "fanny pack." Any item that includes the word "fanny" in its name is a bad fashion choice.

Some people try to solve the overflow of stuff by adding pockets. That's how "cargo pants" were born. They're very popular with boys, especially if at least one of the pockets is big enough to hold a live frog. But these pants are not for us middle-aged men. The big side pockets tend to emphasize the hips, which call enough attention to themselves already. (See "fanny pack" above.)

Now that it's warm, we'll soon go around in our cargo SHORTS, with ever more stuff crammed into fewer pockets, bulging out so much it looks like we're wearing bustles.

Have you seen the TV commercial for the stealth trousers that have cargo pockets hidden inside the legs? In the ad, a woman peers through X-ray glasses and can see the male model's cell phone and pager and other junk all zippered away in there alongside his thighs. She's VERY impressed by this, which is surprising when you consider what else she might be espying through his pants. Maybe Mr. Headset in the coffee shop knows something I don't.

It's time for a solution to the pocket shortage. It's time for America's technological and business geniuses to get together and design something that fits all our needs so we can continue to race headlong through life unencumbered.

I suggest utility belts, like Batman wears. All our little tools of life encapsulated in one snug package, everything miniaturized and computerized and labeled with cool bat logos. Strap that baby on with your swimsuit and you're ready for summer.

If someone can figure a way to include a cup holder, we'll pay extra.

Forget about it

I once called my wife at work, pulled her out of some important meeting, and said two words when she came on the line: "Annette Bening."

She thanked me, hung up, went back to her job.

No, we were not speaking secret-agent code. The night before, we'd seen a few minutes of some TV costume drama and couldn't identify "the actress in the turban." We both recognized her, but no amount of free-association brainstorming could turn up her name. We'd gone to bed stumped.

"Annette Bening" came to me fourteen hours later while I was cleaning the kitchen. I wasn't even thinking about the TV show. But some part of my brain had scanned the memory banks all that time and suddenly coughed up, "Annette Bening." Go figure.

Immediately upon recalling the name "Annette Bening," I phoned my wife. Two reasons: 1) We all love to be first with the correct "Jeopardy" answer, and 2) I knew I'd forget again any minute.

That my wife immediately understood what I was talking about and that she was grateful for the information shows her memory banks had been whirring the whole time, too. Now she could devote that brain space to something else, such as work.

This, my friends, is the current fate of the Baby Boomer. We're reaching "that certain age" where we're starting to forget things. A lot. And it worries us.

Most middle-aged people I know moan about memory loss. In the past week, I've heard the same complaint from two separate people: "It's not that I can't remember things. I can't remember the names of things." This condition inhibits their conversation and makes them fret.
Others find themselves constantly apologizing for missed appointments and broken dates. Many resort to palm-sized computers to keep track of their busy lives, then forget where they left their palm-sized computers.

My problem seems navigational. I'll get up from my desk and go to the kitchen on some errand. When I get to the kitchen, I pause, recognize I have no idea what I was planning to do. I wander back to my desk, then remember the task in the kitchen. I must hurry back to the kitchen to accomplish the task before it flits from my mind again. Then the process repeats.

I often come to in a different room with no notion of what propelled me there. Invariably, I've left my coffee cup elsewhere. So now I'm stranded in the wrong end of the house, nothing to drink, no idea what I was doing or where I should go next.

Worse yet, I do this same routine when I'm driving.

I gave up remembering people's names years ago. I just smile and nod and hope they don't notice. But now we can't remember the names of things? If we can't remember the word "fork," how long before we forget what one is used for?

This is our present, Baby Boomers, and we can only imagine what our doddering, fork-free future will be like.

The cause of this malaise? Brain cells die off as we age, and they take some of our memories and capabilities with them. Many of us accelerated this process in our youths, usually in activities that involved kegs.

But the main reason we can't remember anything is that we have too much to remember. We get too much input -- TV, books, advertising, computers, relatives, strangers all blaring messages at us all day long. We get too little quiet time and way too little sleep, so the messages come faster than our brains can process them. Under this constant barrage, our brains get full and the new stuff starts to push out the old.

To put this in computer terms: The hard-drive is at capacity. All incoming data erases existing data. Do you want to continue?

If the hard-drive is full now, what will we be like in twenty or thirty years?

A 75-year-old woman told me recently that when she can't remember something, she just waits. "It comes eventually."

And when it doesn't?

"Then you call friends. Ask them."

Ah. Regis, keep those lifelines open. I may need them, especially if the answer is anything other than "Annette Bening."

Tall boys

As parents everywhere know, the growth and development of children isn't a smooth, gradual process. It comes in spurts.

A child will go along for a while, essentially the same size as the last time you looked, then -- boom! -- none of his clothes fit anymore. Junior has grown. Again. Which means Mom and Dad get to purchase Junior a new wardrobe.

Parents hate to face up to the cold reality of growth spurts. They like to remember their child as a tiny newborn with perfect little fingers and toes. But the years and the growth spurts rush past, and pretty soon, that beautiful baby is six feet tall and lives in a dorm and has filthy habits.

My two sons -- aged 12 and 9 (when this column first appeared, 2001) -- have suffered growth spurts lately. I suspect the 12-year-old is on the verge of the Big Spurt, the one that will shoot him upward into manhood. And we all know what that means: Adolescence has arrived, and the best thing would be to lock him in a closet and slip food under the door for the next, oh, eight years.

But I digress.

Parents must learn to cope with their offspring's growth spurts. Growing is exhausting and physically painful and can make the child cranky. It also takes an enormous amount of fuel.
With two growing boys at home, I spend all my time at the grocery store. They go through food like a biblical plague of locusts. I've considered just parking them in front of the bulk-food bins at the supermarket and shoveling food directly into them.

You can tell the parents of growth-spurt children at the supermarket. They're the ones pushing caravans of two or more carts, a haunted look on their faces.

My parents also had two sons who grew into big, strapping men. They tell me that when my brother and I left home, they saved so much on groceries, it was like a whole new income.
I was one of those gawky kids who did all his growing at once. I was 5-foot-2 at the beginning of sixth grade, second tallest in my class. (The tallest was a girl.) At the end of seventh grade, I was 6-foot-2.

My 12-year-old son is in the seventh grade now.

He's exhibiting growth-spurt symptoms as well. He's had "dropsy" lately, so many misses and spills, I practically have to follow him around with a mop. He's lost the natural grace of childhood -- he bumps into door jambs and goes wide on corners and knocks over furniture. I did the same during my big spurt, growing too fast to keep up. In fact, I never fully recovered. I almost always bear at least one bruise related to door jambs. They have become the nemeses of my life.

We have empirical evidence of my sons' growth. For one, when I do laundry, I now have trouble telling my sons' jeans from my wife's. They've caught up with her. For another, we've kept careful track of their height over the years.

A lot of families use marks on door jambs for this purpose, but I've already explained I've got a problem with door jambs. At our house, we use a broomstick, painted white. We regularly stand the boys up against it -- checking carefully for tiptoe cheating -- and mark their progress.

We did this the other day and discovered the 12-year-old has outgrown our measuring stick. The stick's only five feet tall and he's surpassed that by an inch or two. We'll have to get a bigger stick. With a teen-ager in the house, that's a good idea for several reasons. . .

My wife has carefully written in the boys' names and the dates of each plateau on the measuring stick. I can run my gaze along this simple broomstick and, in my mind's eye, I can watch my little babies grow up. And it occurred to me, we're not really marking height on that stick, we're marking time.

So I'll keep the stick handy, even after they've both outgrown it. It's a nice reminder of all the times we've had together, a monument to the years that have passed.

Beats standing in front of the mirror, counting gray hairs and bruises.

Happy birthday, Mom

My mother celebrates her 70th birthday today. She and my dad are both retired, and they live in the small town of Sheridan, Ark.

On the phone, she keeps saying, "I never dreamed I'd ever be 70 years old!" I don't know what she expected instead. If you hang around long enough, 70 is bound to happen. And that's fine. Isn't 70 the new 40?

I look at 70 and calculate how many books I can write between now and then. Not that I'm driven or anything.

Gray Thursday

I was just looking at my hair and beard in the mirror, and I'm getting more distinguished by the hour.

Puffing and panting

Call me Mr. Between-Jeans.

Even those of us who work alone in the privacy of our own homes -- where every day is Casual Friday -- occasionally must go out into the world and buy new clothes.

I ventured to the dreaded mall recently in search of blue jeans. Autumn (the Official Season of Long Pants) had arrived and my only pair of jeans had become so tattered that they could no longer be seen in public.

Of course, they weren't my ONLY pair of jeans. I have a whole closetful. All of us who grew up in the Era of Blue Denim have stockpiles of jeans because we never, ever throw out a pair no matter their state of disrepair or their laughably outdated sizes. But I was down to one pair that fit comfortably.

When one reaches a "certain age," jeans that once molded sleekly to one's body become way too tight in all the wrong places. Squeeze into a pair and within an hour or two, you'll feel like a magician's assistant, being sawn in half. You know you've got a problem when you remove the jeans and you can still tell what brand they were by the stitching and rivet patterns pocked into your skin.

If you're like me, you wear the most comfortable pair over and over until they're as faded as Grandma's housedress. They get that weird fringe at the ankles where you've walked the hems off underfoot. Seams fray and buttons pop and, eventually, you're essentially wearing a long denim loincloth. Not the preferred look for the successful at-home worker.

So it's out into the world to buy new jeans. The selection these days is mind-boggling. Cargos and carpenters and cowboy cuts. "Classic" fits and "relaxed" fits and "loose." Loose sounds pretty enticing, particularly to someone whose favorite garment is a bathrobe, but I try them on only to find that I'm "sagging" in the wrong places. You can only wear the really baggy jeans if your main form of transportation is a skateboard.

I try some "relaxed" jeans and they're okay, seemingly designed for sitting rather than standing, which should suit my lifestyle fine. But the fit isn't quite right.

I don't know what it's like for women, but men's sizes change after one reaches a "certain size." Waist sizes no longer inch along. Once you get past a 34-inch waist (and I think I passed that in college), the sizes jump up in increments of two inches. Naturally, I fall between two sizes. One's buttonable as long as I hold my breath. The next size up feels like they'll fall off. (Probably not much chance of that happening. There's all that "office muscle" below the waist that'll keep them from actually dropping. But they FEEL wrong.)

And they're too long, which seems impossible for a man who's 6-foot-5, who's typically lucky to find anything his size on regular department store racks. But suddenly I don't wear a 36-inch inseam anymore. I wear a 34. Am I shrinking? Did something happen to my legs when I wasn't looking? Are the jeans just riding that much lower these days?

I finally attribute the length problem to the prewashing all jeans undergo these days. In my youth, we always bought jeans a tad long because we knew they'd shrink. Now, they've already shrunk -- supposedly -- and the result is a different size for me. I like that explanation better than the idea that I'm growing shorter with every passing day.

Once I adjust for length, the waist size still feels wrong. So I try the "classic" fits and then different brands and styles, going in and out of the fitting room so often the salespeople start to eye me suspiciously.

Finally, I realize I'm holding the new jeans to too high a standard. I want them to feel just like my ancient, ratty jeans, which have stretched and strained to my body for years. Even with all the pre-washing and size-shifting, jeans still need a "breaking-in" period. So I buy a pair, trusting that they'll eventually feel just right.

But my shopping adventure reminds me that the best uniform for the work-at-home dad remains a bathrobe. One size fits all.