Did You Know?

Senior moments arrive in various ways, at unexpected times, and often unrecognized. Here are some things to ponder whether they contribute to a senior moment (something unexpected, or startling or . . .).

Our Health Care Concern. Did you realize that our country is getting old?

With many living longer, fewer children being born, couples waiting longer to marry and/or raise families. Soon a huge number of Baby Boomers will become seniors, entering the dominion of Medicare and the like. Will the system withstand its onslaught with fewer and fewer workers to support it in spite of congressional attempts to "fix" it?

Then, what about the excesses challenging health care such as obesity? Did you know that the American Sports Data discovered that 31% of the population is clinically obese, that 3.8 million people weigh over 300 pounds and that the average adult female tips the scale at 163 pounds? Or that the annual cost of treating diabetes exceeds $200 billion. Or that we pay dearly for malpractice awards. Defensive medicine is indeed costly as medical practitioners are forced to practice defensive medicine at our expense (and theirs). A dear friend of ours gave up medicine because of exorbitant insurance costs. Enough concern here for a senior moment or two?

Our Concern for Comfort. We are known as a consumer society with the ease of credit cards and bombarded by commercials of every description. Some interesting developments are occurring to counter this in addition to less spending. People are bartering with each other (trading this for that) on a small scale (like clothing and household effects) to major items like trading an auto for a boat, or trading houses (for those who want to downscale or need more space).

I just read about the challenge of improving on the "ancient" typewriter (remember those?). Many of us have somewhat mastered the keyboard and mouse and some are experimenting with sensors on an armband to send signals to the computer rather than using a keyboard. But our success with voice recognition is so so at best.

These are only a couple of things that confront us daily. In short, senior moments can occur at any moment when we observe life just as I reacted when I read that defensive medicine could cost anywhere from $100-178 billion per year. Or that an estimated 400,000 persons weigh over 400 pounds (mostly men).

What we don't know maybe does hurt us.