Seniors Unlimited

Seniors have been hooking up to the Internet at a rate that far outpaces the rest of the population in recent years. Since 2000, the number of Americans older than 65 using the Internet rose more than 160 percent, said Susannah Fox, an associate director of the Pew Internet and American Life Project, which tracks the social impact of Internet use. Over the same period, no other age group grew by more than 70 percent.

This means that more seniors are using the computer for many things: e-mail, doing finances, exploring, looking up times and places and maps, writing letters. Speaking of writing, many seniors are encouraged to develop another senior moment by writing their memoirs. But I hear them saying, I can’t write. Besides, who would even care? You’d be surprised. Your children, grandchildren, neighbors, friends, even enemies, would love to take a peek at your memoirs. And who knows, it might even prompt you to write more letters, articles, love notes, pamphlets or even a book or two.

It might take awhile before you are discovered or appreciated. One of the laments I hear more and more often by seniors goes something like this: If I only would have asked my parents, siblings, grandparents more questions when they were alive. This is so true in my own life. My mother died of cancer at age 39 when I was just under four years old. What do I remember? Not much. What do I know about her? Not enough. My father remarried four years later but rarely spoke of our mother (I have a sister one year younger than I). As a child and even as an adult, I didn’t ask enough questions. Now her peers are all gone and my memory bank is nearly empty.

Will others appreciate your memoirs, scribbles or notes? You better believe it but it may not happen in your lifetime but it will happen if they are put into writing of some sort. So, do it. Now before you forget or get out of the mood. Your computer, typewriter, notepad are waiting. Now and then I delve into books out of my area of expertise, interest or experience. Forbes has been hitting my mailbox for a couple years now and here are some excerpts (July 23, 2007, Volume 180, Number 2, page 216) on THOUGHTS On the Business of Life. Worried about criticism about your memoirs or letters or scribbling? Never fear. It happens to the best writers. Look:

Hemingway was a prisoner of his style. No one can talk like the characters in Hemingway except the characters in Hemingway. His style in the wildest sense finally killed him. —William S. Burrroughs

I can’t read ten pages of Steinbeck without throwing up. —James Gould Cozzens

If a writer has to rob his mother, he will not hesitate; the "Ode on a Grecian Urn" is worth any number of old ladies. —William Faulkner

Virginia Woolf, I enjoyed talking to her, but thought nothing of her writing. I considered her a "beautiful little knitter." —Edith Sitwell

Behold, my desire is, that the Almighty would answer me, and that mine adversary had written a book. —Job 31.35

Fortunately, most of us are not famous and we might earn a snide remark or two if we write. But really, who cares. Do it for posterity, not for gain or fame.