hypochondria du jour

Last weekend I was out in Grellingen, reading the most recent issue of National Geographic in the sauna. The cover story was devoted to the vagaries of memory - the focus was on how our brains remember and how little we still know about it. I sat in a dry, windowless, wooden cell with the temperature hovering between 80-85 degrees Celsius, leaning over the glossy pages of the magazine, drops of sweat beating rhythmically down on a colorful chart showing the decline of our memory with age. The chart began with age 21, the graph was at its apex. I roamed to the next denomination, age 30, listed along the x-axis. The dip in the graph was visibly evident. In the intervening week I am convinced that every time I have to look something up twice it is a sign that my brain is crumbling.