Take this five-question test to find out.

“Right now I’m having amnesia and déjà vu at the same time. I think I’ve forgotten this before.”― Steven Wright

“If you wish to forget anything on the spot, make a note that this thing is to be remembered.”― Edgar Allan Poe

“You forget something new every day.” – Sophia of Golden Girls

I remember how upset my mother was, 45 years ago, when she forgot where she put her black Playtex long leg panty girdle.  (Please note that I have remembered this event for over four decades!) It nearly drove her crazy, that girdle, and how she could have possibly forgotten where she’d stowed this precious garment.  I told her not to worry about it, to just buy another.  “Just forget it,” I said, but of course, that’s exactly what she had done.  And she was worried that she was losing her marbles.

Eight years later, while I was helping Mom pack for her move to a condo, I found the girdle, which had fallen behind her sewing cabinet and had been trapped there.  My mother was thrilled to discover that she had not forgotten where she had put the girdle, but rather that it had fallen victim to gravity and heedless housekeeping.  So much drama surrounding  a garment that she now had the good sense not to wear.

Fast forward to Fall 2o14.  Rick and I had just driven past Lexington on our way to Sarasota, when I realized I had forgotten to bring my blow dryer, my phone charger, and my bathing suit.  Rick put a positive spin on my forgetfulness:  “Good.  Bad luck comes in threes.”

I guess I let down my guard, because when we were  an hour away from the Botswick, Georgia Best Western, I realized I had forgotten my winter coat in the motel room.  Then, that very same day, Rick forgot his hat in a Denny’s in Spring Hill, Florida.   Instead of laughing or fighting about our bad memories, as we would have in our forties, we were distraught.  Were we losing our marbles?

Two days later when I forgot where I left the only key to our beachfront condo, despite the fact that we were going to have to pay for a replacement, Rick clapped his hands in delight:  “That’s three!”

Let’s face it:  People our age are terrified about losing our marbles.  At breakfast one morning, my good friend (uh, what’s her name?) confided to five pals that every morning when she picked up a book to resume reading, she realized she had forgotten the characters, the setting, and the plot.  She had read somewhere that this was a sign of dementia.  All of us admitted that we couldn’t remember a damn thing about what we had read the night before either (except for Donna who was reading a Danielle Steele book). What’s-her-name looked greatly relieved.   The rest of us lost our appetites.

I wonder if any of the ladies went home like I did and googled “memory loss” or “can’t-remember-shit” or “losing-your-marbles.”

What I found on reputable websites was not particularly reassuring.  After wading through the scientific lingo (“hippocampus,” “neural pathways,” “cognition,” “phone  numbers”), I found lists of symptoms, questionnaires,  and charts that differentiated normal age-related forgetfulness from, well, you know.

There was a lot of wiggle room and gray area in these guidelines, so I’m having trouble determining if I’ve really lost my marbles.  Here are some questionnaire items from one of the websites:

• Is your memory worse than a year ago?
• Do you misplace items more than once a month?
• Do you have trouble remembering your medications?
• Do you forget six things on a one-week Florida vacation?
• Have you forgotten where your panty girdle is?

My Internet investigation did not yield the definitive answers I needed/wanted about the severity of my marble seepage, so I embarked on a robust research study of my own.

First, I consulted experts whom I found drinking coffee at McDonald’s at 7:00 AM and eating  meatloaf at Cracker Barrel at 4:30 PM.  I amassed vast quantities of data and, using one-way analysis of variance, a slide rule, the phases of the moon, and the fortune I found in a cookie, generated the following reliable guidelines.

You may be losing your marbles if . . .

1.  You forget where you parked your car. . . but, if you only forget when it’s raining, or if it’s 95 degrees and you have ice cream or shrimp in your cart, then you are totally normal.

2.  You can’t access your DVR-d episodes of Nurse Jackie with your four remotes . . . but, if you have the good sense to call your adult child to do it for you (even if it’s in the middle of the night), then you are completely normal and resourceful, to boot.

3.  You walk to the basement/the kitchen/the walk-in closet with a goal-driven gait, but when you arrive, you have no idea why you went there . . . but if you shift gears and grab an extension cord/garlic press/shoe horn to cover your lapse, you are perfectly normal and innovative.  (If you go to the bathroom and forget why, I’m afraid you have lost your marbles.)

4.  You try to print on the back of a page, but instead print the second page upside down and on top of the first page . . . but if you simply reload the paper, rotating and flipping and sliding it using the theorems you learned in Mrs. Sandaker ninth grade geometry class (instead of rotating, flipping, or sliding the printer), then join the human race. You are fine.

5.  You forget that unique password with at least six characters including a capital letter, a tilde, and the last four digits of your Sunday school teacher’s social security number . . . but if you click “forget password” and reset it to your birthdate to match your other 37 passwords, you are not only normal, but also expedient and practical.

My 95-year-old mother-in-law says, “Getting old ain’t for sissies.”  This from the woman who remembers her grandchild’s address in San Jose and the price she paid for bananas three weeks ago.  She has all her marbles.

Few of us are blessed with Mrs. Lingo’s mental acuity.  But it’s true that aging’s not easy for anyone.  We’re all rookies at getting old, and that’s why we feel compelled to reassure each other at every turn that we’re okay.

Let’s talk about it at our Fourth of July picnic, okay?  What’s the date of that?

Copyright © 2015 Sandy Lingo, All Rights Reserved

Hope you’ll return for A Second Helping next week to read the absolutely true story about my Grandpa Gil’s disappearance in the Smoky Mountains.

All kidding aside, I am terrified about dementia, and if you’re my age, I bet you are, too.  Julianne Moore may have won an Oscar for Still Alice, but I’m still not going to see it.  I lost my Grandpa Gil to Alzheimer Disease, a centimeter at a time.  If you want to learn more about the disease or contribute money to research, click here:  http://www.alzfdn.org