And, to repeat, here we are, feeling fine, looking good, full of ginger, all bucketed up and historically with no place to go. May as well mortify the kids and do what we want when we want. The meter s ticking. If we plan it right, we can be a constant 30-year mortification machine. Sometimes that is true, and then it s not at all funny.
Seniors have no edge there.
And there are forms of latter-life dementia and illnesses, including of course Alzheimer s. They are tragedies for all involved. But most folks don t change much during their later years, beyond the usual physical aging and decline in short-term memory. The fear of mental incompetence is for most groundless. We do process sensory information slower and take longer to perceive a stimulus, and slower yet when the task is complicated or a surprise.