It’s a common belief that as we get older we have less energy and are less active. Well, it may be true that we do less, but it’s not for lack of energy. Mostly it’s for being too easily distracted and forgetting what we were going to do in the first place. As evidence of this, last Saturday I decided to water the lawn right after breakfast but ended up checking my email first.
Much later I went outside, unwound the hose, looked toward the driveway and noticed that my car needed washing. I put down the hose and went in the garage to look for a bucket and towels. Then I went back in the house to get the car keys and noticed mail on the dining room table that I’d brought in earlier. I decided to go through it before washing the car, so I put down the keys and sorted junk mail into the trash can in the kitchen.
Before opening bills I thought I would empty the trash, but it occurred to me that taking out the can would involve going past the mailbox again so I figured I might as well pay the bills first. I found my checkbook and saw there was only one check left, the rest were in a drawer upstairs. While looking for the checks I noticed a half-finished cup of coffee on top of the dresser and decided to take it downstairs to the sink before it caused a ring on the wood.
Back in the kitchen, I saw there were still dishes in the sink from breakfast and started rinsing them to put in the dishwasher, but I ran out of dish soap. I thought there was a spare bottle in the pantry and went to get it, but seeing the food made me think about what to make for dinner. I chose a box of pasta and put it on the counter where I found the TV remote I must have left there the night before. To avoid missing it later I took it to the living room.
I remembered there was a show that evening I wanted to record on the DVR, but while trying to find the channel I noticed an old movie was on, so I settled down to watch for a few minutes. A car commercial came on that reminded me I had left the hose out, so I went to move it and realized that the lawn still needed watering. I moved the hose back toward the lawn but there wasn’t enough time to water before the movie would start again so I headed back to the living room.
By that point the lawn was still not watered, the car was unwashed, the hose lay on the grass, no bills were paid, the trash was not emptied, dishes were still in the sink and I couldn’t find the car keys to go to the store for dish soap. Despite accomplishing nothing, I was exhausted and settled back in my favorite chair to watch the rest of the old movie, but I felt sleepy and started to drift off. The last thing I remember before dozing was a female in the old movie saying “I’ll think about it tomorrow at Tara.” She was definitely my kind of woman.
(With thanks and a tip of the hat to the anonymous internet author who gave us the idea for this article.)
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