Nonfiction by Rusty Evans
“My Wrinkled Brain” was the second-place winner in nonfiction in the 2024 Golden Quill Writing Contest.
Lately, I’ve had this suspicion my brain is wearing out. I’m not angry about it. I’m pretty sure I anticipated it. I don’t have any memories of thinking about it much up until now. Maybe I put it out of my head, hoping it wouldn’t happen. But now, I wonder, did I do that deliberately, or did the expectation wander off on its own? I don’t remember, and there lies the problem. The state I’m in is often one of confusion of late. So far, at least, it’s been a vacation getaway, not a place I’d call my permanent home.
I’ve had a good run with this brain. It helped me get into college many years ago, leading me to non-homework classes. It allowed me to cram enough information during last-minute, amphetamine-fueled nights to pass tests. Meanwhile, some of its sections were never fully developed, like the ones that control the motivation to do things like “make the bed” or “hang up clothes.” My brain helped me accept this by reassuring me, “Nobody’s perfect.”
Indeed, I don’t want to piss it off at this point in my life. As a white-haired male in the dusk years of his life, I will need all of it, so I’m choosing to stay on friendly terms. I don’t need some A.I. wannabe in my head with an agenda.
This self-examination began after I came across an article (online post) discussing the deterioration of our mind and physical brain while still alive. I decided, right then and there: This is happening to me! Why not? Very few of my decisions over the years were made with its preservation in mind. For instance, I used to play tackle football without a helmet, something most medical professionals would agree might not be the best activity for a teenage head. Growing up, no one ever told me that French fries and Orange Crush weren’t part of a brain-healthy diet. The importance of exercise and sleep for maintaining future cognitive fitness should have been clarified. But I won’t be all bitter and angry over something that happened so long ago. That isn’t a sensible response to something somewhat out of my control. (I read that on the internet, too.)
What precisely is going on, or not going on, in that brain of mind to cause concern? Well, come to find out, the human brain shrinks as we age. When we were growing up, we were taught that we only use ten percent of our brains and that ninety percent of it is left unused. However, studies now show that this is a misconception. While we may use only about ten percent of our brains at any moment, we use nearly all of our brains at different times. Neuroscientists have researched this and have proven this point despite no apparent good reason for them to do so.
Another issue is something called cerebral atrophy. This is the fancy title for the condition caused by the loss of brain cells. Most cells will regenerate, so losing a few is no big deal. Except, when we were in school, brain cells were the exception. Back then, if you killed them with drugs, for instance, they wouldn’t be coming back. These same neuroscientists, probably trying to make up for taking our excess unused brain mass away, have decided that brain cells regenerate after all. Growing up might have been much more enjoyable had we had the correct information.
One positive finding was that seniors, if given the opportunity, can learn a new task and do it as well as someone younger. It’s simply a matter of giving us enough time to get it done. Of course, that is something we have less of left. And if there are printed directions, the font size would have to be big enough to read, so it might take a grove of trees to make the paper necessary. But if the challenge is simple enough and doesn’t require patience, dexterity, or decent vision, there is no limit to what we older people can do!
I caution older Americans against running for political office, however. Seniors have been known to win elections, which gives them a job that requires quick thinking on their feet. I know I can’t even stand that long, to begin with. And being upright can cause gravity to slow blood pumping to our brains, making it less efficient. That’s not science; that’s common sense.
Our cerebral cortex, the brain’s outer layer, also changes as we age. Seniors expect their hair to get gray and their skin to become wrinkled, but this isn’t what happens with our brains. After all, there’s already gray matter there, and the surface of the cerebral cortex is wrinkled anyway. It gets thin, but unlike with our bodies, getting thinner as the years go by is not good. This change in structure slows down the cognitive synapses. This could mean we might be unable to solve complex trigonometric problems and quadratic equations as they arise. But rest assured, most of us can survive with little change in our daily routine.
There are four areas most affected by the maturing adult brain: recall, multi-tasking, learning, and processing. Each of these results in different symptoms, which are essential to recognize. Here are some examples, for instance, of what one might encounter on a trip to the grocery store:
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- If you’re leaving for Albertson’s, you can’t find your keys after locking the house and getting into your car. You go back into your home, look in all the usual spots, decide they must be in the car, go back out, lock the door, get back into the —car—and there you find them in your hand. Recall is remembering you can’t lock your house without keys. But now you can’t find your sunglasses ….
- So, on your way to the store, you keep one eye on the road while the other searches the floor for your Ray-Bans. You answer a call from India, use your knees to steer, and then reach under the seat with your free hand. Without warning, your sunglasses drop onto your lap because someone has stuck them on your head. This is multitasking, something law enforcement prefers you not to do while driving at any age.
- While shopping, you notice a lot of discounts via “digital coupons.” You’ve never used them. You ask a clerk, who instructs you to go to the grocery store website on your phone to download them. After mixing up the letters, you end up in a chatroom with a three-legged dominatrix on a North Korean porn site. You ask the clerk for help again, but she gasps and drops your phone in the dairy case. This is when there isn’t enough time for your older brain to start learning something new.
- Usually, you play a game with yourself and try to add up the prices while they’re being scanned to see how close you get to the final total. This time, the first item is a pound of bacon for $13.99. The aging brain stares at the package, now in your grocery bag. The clerk continues to check items, but your brain is stuck in a processing loop. You swipe your card, averting your eyes from the final tally.
Given severe brain disorders and disabilities are no joke, we need solutions sooner rather than later for diseases like Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and ALS. The aging brain, however, is not an illness, just part of a maturing life. We should rejoice after making it to this stage; the brain has evolved into something better suited for life going forward. Do not worry; your mind can continue to thrive and, at the same time, stay firmly in the gutter.
Indeed, there will be seniors who make it to their golden years but will need help remembering what made them so golden. But a slower brain may not be all bad for many of us. Our body compensates for aging by giving us snail-like reactions, and with everything now in slow motion, we may never even notice that much has changed.
I’ve decided to be okay with my brain being a little more tired. It’s worked hard at hardly working for me through the years. We’ve been inseparable from birth, and I don’t think either would do very well without the other. We’ll need each other to muddle and navigate through our senior years together.
Originally from the great town of Tulare in the San Joaquin Valley, Rusty Evans came to the Central Coast in 1979 after leaving Fresno State, where he studied history. He was determined to make his life here, and he did so by succeeding in car sales until his retirement in 2022. His wife, Stacy, is a retired Public Health Microbiologist. Rusty has published bad country western songs and meant-to-be humorous essays over the years and has a half-written mystery novel somewhere on his hard drive. He is chancellor of Baywood State, a fake school with a website selling real T-shirts.