Nonagenarian Ne'er-do-wells Obfuscating Octogenarians

[Working Draft]

It’s a well-known fact that all the best stories start with, “It’s a well known fact…” And, it is a better known fact that the extremely elderly know something we do not. At the age of eighty (quite the young man or woman to any in his nineties), our curiosity hits a lifetime peak, and the exiting generation must protect this information at all costs!

It is quite easy with teens—so plugged in they aren’t connected. And younger adults—preoccupied with the importance of being important enough to be hired by important people to do important jobs, so they can acquire important things. Twenty and thirty-somethings—most of their time spent working hard to look the age they were when they wished they were this age. Middle-agers—trying to stay numb enough that all the days run together as one. And even the younger over-the-hillers—trying to sell all of those “important” things, so that they can retire from their “important” jobs.

The retirees, however, must be watched out for, as they have begun to have a bit of time to question the true meaning of life. Again, it is the octogenarian that is the most dangerous. And, I’ll say this, the eighty-year-old who has led the most exciting life is more dangerous still.

Furthermore, these nonagenarians have you completely fooled! Alzheimers, dementia, senility! Ploys, I tell you!

And eighty-year-olds know it. They know there is something being hidden by their elders. They don’t buy the “My memory is getting so bad…” or the “How is it I can remember how to inflate a Mae West, but I can’t remember what I had for breakfast…”. The octogenarians know that their own memories have only been getting stronger, and that it’s not that far a leap to imagine that with an extra decade how much stronger still, their memories would be. “Degradation of the mind, indeed! I’m not falling for it!” exclaim these elderly whipper snappers.

Well, this is the story of octogenarian, Otto, who hatched a plan.

Otto, an eighty-nine year old (in fact, only ten days from ninety), knew that Ernst, his childhood friend, had never had issues with memory a day in his life. Ernst, could recite pi to fifty places. Ernst knew, in order, the names of all of the U.S. presidents, including the bad ones. He could rattle off one to one hundred in Afrikaans, alphabetically. The Apostle’s Creed in Pig Latin IN Latin? Easy! The Gettysburg Address? He even knew the zip code! Psalm 23 in Aramaic? Ernst could even do Psalm 23 squared and would ask for something harder!

So, when on his ninetieth birthday, Ernst couldn’t remember where he had laid his favorite cane (the one carved from mesquite with a handle that looked like a coyote’s head), Otto wasn’t buying it. Up until last week, sitting in their favorite armchairs by the window at St. Anthony’s old folks’ home, they had been discussing the oddity that was the memory loss of ninety-year-olds:

“Albert’s lost his marbles!” Ernst had exclaimed, only a week earlier.

“Wasn’t he still developing new postulates and theorems about quantum string theory a couple months ago?” Otto had replied.

“Well, today, he couldn’t remember if he drank the water or took the pills first!”

Octogenarian Otto could remember the flannel pajamas that Ernst was wearing that day and the worried look in his light blue eyes at Albert’s abrupt decline.

The knowledge of centenarians, the seniorest of citizens.