Excuse me while I have a quiet senior moment...

“Having a senior moment” is a description that appeals to me – it glosses over one's increasing age and decreasing memory and - did I mention it glosses over one's age? Instead, it makes it sound like you have chosen to take a moment off whatever you’re doing, in order to practise for your real old age (when you wont have a choice in the matter of what you forget and what you remember).

Whatever, that's how I like to describe it - "I'm not losing my memory, I'm only having a senior moment." Like when I stop in the middle of a supermarket aisle wondering what I am supposed to get. The one thing for which I drove all the way to the supermarket is the one thing that I wont remember through an entire hour of wandering up and down ALL the aisles, popping things at random into my trolley (in the hope that one of them would be The Item, or at least jog my memory). Nope. I have to pay a small fortune for my shopping and go all the way back home... which is of course when memory kicks in. Hey stupid, you forgot the milk! Isnt that what you went there for?

I take comfort from the fact that I dont forget totally. I DO remember things, eventually. So what if it's not when they're most required? At least I REMEMBER things, dont I?

Make lists before you go shopping, I've been told. And I do. I methodically check each shelf in the kitchen and the store room to ensure that my list is comprehensive. My lists are works of art. They adorn my kitchen counter in all their organised glory... while I zoom off to the shops enveloped in that haze of satisfaction that only comes from - yep, a senior moment. I tell you, it takes forever to remember things but only a moment to forget. (Perhaps I should be contributing to greeting card philosophy?)

I'm glad I'm not alone, though. The other day, I asked Pete to stop by the clinic so that I could pick up a prescription for him. We were in the company van which could not be turned around easily in the clinic's small parking area, so Pete said he would do a U-turn in the cul de sac and come back. Off I went inside, collected the prescription and walked back to the entrance - just in time to see Pete driving serenely past, with not even a glance in my direction. He went all the way to the next junction before it struck him (not a glancing blow, just a gentle tap, methinks) that perhaps he was meant to have somebody in the passenger seat... And when I reached him, the sheepish look on his face said it all.

He had forgotten all about me.

I knew that, of course... but I still HAD to ask him what on earth he thought he was doing, whizzing off like that and leaving me behind.

"I was having a senior moment," he said apologetically.

*sigh*

How could I deny him that?