Tomorrow I will give you my definition of “senior moment”.

It has moved on from “tomorrow” and this is the second attempt, as it wasn’t quite as easy to pin down as precisely as I wanted to. Basically, a senior moment is much like a mistake, but with a touch of pathos, and traces of decay and self pity.

Julia by the Canal

Looking for a line to use about senior moments, I would define them as mistakes made with a Shakespearean flourish. They don’t require three witches or three daughters an eye of newt or a blasted heath, but they do require a touch of pathos and a recognition that faculties are faltering, if not actually failing.

It is probably easier to say what is not a senior moment. It really also needs to be relatable, without being commonplace, and to lend itself to becoming an anecdote. A simple error copying a date wrongly, for instance, will not do. We all do it and it doesn’t require age to make it happen. It also tends to lack a beginning, a middle and an end with any significance.

They vary, I suppose, from person to person. I, for instance, have laboured over the years with trying to remember names. As a salesman, and an antiques dealer, it was a useful skill and I developed a scheme for remembering them. Now that I’m retired, and can default to my normal position of not caring what people are called, it’s just something I have always done, rather than a failing of age. The fact that I have stopped trying to remember  is probably a function of age, but that is just curmudgeonly disregard for others, rather than a senior moment. I’ve met enough people, I don’t need to remember them all.

Julia, Sutton-on-Sea

For some of you reading, who actually like people and who remember names easily, forgetting a name is probably a notable event.

Does anyone have any comments?

The pictures of Julia, by the way, do not represent mental decline, they were just some i hadn’t used for a while.