Ree FR SEXUAL SHENANIGANS The Globe & Mail recently reported that "A study at the University of Pittsburgh has found that 22 per cent of people over the age of 75 suffer from mild cognitive impairment, a condition that affects their ability to pay attention to and focus on their surroundings." A Dr. Oscar Lopez commented, "We were surprised at how prevalent this condition was." Come on Dr., wake up! Most human beings have their ability to pay attention impaired as soon as they start school. By the time people are my age, ail of them suffer cognitive impairment. At current rates, most of my friends will be certifiably cuckoo by the age of 75. My mother had been a teacher before marriage, and it must have been embarrassing for her to be forced to handle the queries of my grade school instructors as to why I was so loud, squirmy and unsettled. I wasn't alone. The kid in front of me, in his ineffable boredom, would carefully segregate one hair with his fingers, then yank it out. He had a large bald spot before the authorities somehow stopped him. A highiight for me was throwing up on Roger Miller, who sat beside me in Miss Lane's fifth grade class. My clever act caused paroxysms of excitement in the classroom for about ten minutes. Roger Miller was particularly repulsed as he was wearing some kind of a hairy sweater and my projectile vomit added new and exciting colours to it as well as an unusual odor. Most of the kids had trouble paying attention in school. As long as the teaching pace is geared to the slowest learner, all the others will demonstrate an inability to pay attention. Sure, you say, that's grade school. But in high school, it's no different. The boys are thinking of girls, and the girls are thinking of boys. It's difficult to pay attention with hormones coursing through the bloodstream like an armada of canoes shooting over Viagrara Falls. Attention span continues to decline for various reasons until by the time a person reaches their sixties, it's hard to concentrate long enough to tie your shoes. Velcro and zippers are life savers for old people. We go into the bedroom to get....oh, what the heck was it? We leave the bedroom, get back to the kitchen, and then remember why it was 'we went into the bedroom. We start reading a a book and know, absolutely know, that we've read it before, but can't remember the plot. Same with movies and TV. It's discouraging. I can barely keep up with television shows which critics say "pander to the ut any show Tama plot eludes me and Ie avoid them. Xe can wteneiiber my mothers frustration when she would watch her favorite daytime TV drama (read "soap" here), and my father would continually interrupt. "Who's that?" "Where did she come from?" "How did they get there?". The most frustrating incidents are those when I'm doing some little home repair job. Use the screwdriver to carefully remove the screw and fix whatever is wrong, then after a ten minute search for the screw, reinsert it. But now, where is the *&"% screwdriver? Where could it have gone? You haven't moved more than a foot, yet it's disappeared. Finally locating it (you're sitting on it), all that remains is to crank the screw back in, but you can't without your glasses. Where the $#@$ did they go? Yes, I know they can be attached with chains so the glasses hang around the neck, but I think they look like the strings that hold the mittens on kindergarten children, so have thus far not succumbed to my forgetfulness. Maybe I suffer from "athazagoraphobia", a fear of forgetting things. If so I have good reason for it. The study referenced at the start of this article just proves what any reasonable person already knows. The | Tree Trimming & Removal Brush chipping Lot clearing Continued on page 10 " 57 = Firewood Hardwood & Softwood lumber - Glenn Guernsey a 476-3757 4