Young Timers' Disease

There's this commercial out now whose whole point is to scare anyone older than 65 into going to their doctor to ask if prescription Aricept is right for them. The thing is, it's got me scared enough to be contemplating that phone call for myself.

The commercial looks like this: a woman of a certain age is asking her husband about her car keys, and they find them in the refrigerator. The scene comes to a screeching halt, scary music is played, and we are all told that only the very expensive name brand drug we see in this commercial can help our grandparents find their car keys.

Oh, I know. Dementia is nothing to joke about. Especially since I'm 35 and judging by the scenario in this commercial, I just may have Alzheimer's. Because if finding one's car keys in the Frigidaire is the first symptom, well, I reached that milestone a long time ago.

It's riduculous, really. I mean, I seem to remember an email going around years ago listing all the places you should look for your car keys when you can't find them, and one of them was, honest to God, the refrigerator. (But maybe I shouldn't be trusting my memory now.) That tells me that other people have found them there. It's not (necessarily) the sign of a brain cell Apocalypse.

When it's happened to me, it goes like this: I've come in from a quick grocery trip and Jason wasn't home to help me unload. So I have loaded plastic grocery bags lined up from wrist to elbow as I trudge up the stairs, car keys in one hand. As soon as I reach the upstairs landing, my kid or my pet or both have started circling my ankles wondering what's in the bags. Then the phone starts ringing or someone knocks on the door and before I know it all groceries have been dumped in the fridge along with anything else in my hand, which includes my car keys. Hours later, I find them when I reach for the milk. Or beer. See? Not what my mom and her friends jokingly call "Old Timers" (it's all fun and games until someone ends up on Aricept), but a common misplacing of keys during a moment of stress.

Or is it?

Over the weekend, our friends were asking us about our upcoming cruise.

"Now, where are you all going again?"

"Puerto Rico and St. Thomas. And...um...two other places that I can't remember. But I'm sure they're going to be fun!"

I looked to Jason for assistance at my failed memory.

"Um...some island in the Bahamas?"

Neither one of us could remember the other two stops of this cruise that we have planned and saved for and prepaid excursions on. Even now, after refreshing my memory after we got home that night, I can't tell you without going to the Carnival website and smacking myself in the forehead for being such an idiot that I can't remember where we're going on that big boat in three weeks.

So maybe it is dementia.

Or maybe it's that my brain has finally reached its capacity for new knowledge. Nothing else will hold. Or maybe being a mom has eaten up my brain. Or maybe it's just that I have so much going on and am so distracted all the time by wondering what to cook for dinner, or how I'm going to get Ainsley's laundry done, or when her next check-up is.

Wait, what were we talking about?

Ah, yes! My possible early onset dementia! Now I remember.

Oh, no. Young Timers' Disease.

Anyone else feel a call about prescription Aricept is only a day away? And where is the strangest place you've found your car keys?