Age and foibles

Last night, I did something truly dumb and it was only by an incredible stroke of dumb luck and fortuitous timing that it didn’t turn into an honest-to-goodness disaster. (And before you ask, no, I’m not about to tell you what dumb thing I did – it’s too embarrassing.)

The thing is, my faux pas had to do with mental failures. Failure to notice and failure to recall and failure to predict. Failure of situational awareness.

And that scares me.

Maybe it should and maybe it shouldn’t but the simple fact is that at age thirty this would have been a woops, sorry about that. At sixty, it’s more of a “is this how it begins?” And therein lays the genesis of my discomfort.

I’ve never been an athlete or developed any particular physical skills but I’ve always been able to rely on my brain. My work is centered there, as are most of my leisure activities. Noticing and recalling and situational awareness have always been my strong suits, my go-to abilities. So when I fail to notice and correct a simple but potentially catastrophic situation, it sets me reeling.

I’ll provide a more entertaining post soon, I promise. But for the moment, I’m sort of tied up with spinal shivers.