THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, February 25, 1996 TAG: 9602210047
SECTION: REAL LIFE PAGE: K1 EDITION: FINAL
COLUMN: HE SAID, SHE SAID
SOURCE: KERRY DOUGHERTY & DAVE ADDIS
LENGTH: Medium: 86 lines
KERRY SAYS:
What follows is alarming news for any woman who lives with a guy who remembers her birthday only because she has papered the house with Post-It notes or who frequently begins sentences with ``Where do we keep the . . . ?'' Fill in the blank with towels, socks or toothpaste.
Scientists have discovered that men's brains change as they age. No, they don't get better - they SHRINK.
This scares the bejeebers out of me. And it ought to frighten every woman who lives with a middle-aged man who already has the memory capacity of a rodent.
I have been lying awake at night ever since I read a news story about shrinking brains. I worry about what comes next. Each day I study Steve for signs of brain shrinkage. I'm trying not to think about what the future holds for us, but I find myself urging him to read more books. (Under my breath I mutter, ``While you still can.'')
This isn't fair, Dave. As any woman will tell you, we spend most of our married lives trying to help the men we live with mature - trying to teach them little tricks for remembering things. (Like my birthday is Sept. 16. That's just about the time the baseball season gets interesting, the Redskins are losing, U.Va. football has started and the autumnal equinox is right around the corner.)
After all that hard work we get this bit of fabulous news: This is as good at it gets. The future is truly bleak.
The only good thing I can say is that as men's brains shrink they also seem to get more lovable. I notice my mother seems more inclined to laugh these days than to bite her nails to the quick over my father's increasingly brainless behavior.
This is the guy who rises before dawn each day to walk to the 7-Eleven to buy a newspaper. A few months ago he got up, put the dog on the leash and took a moonlit walk to the convenience store. The racks were empty when he walked in, and Dad immediately became indignant.
``Where are your papers?'' he demanded.
The clerk screwed up her face and tapped her watch. ``Mister, it's only 1 a.m. The papers don't get here till 5.''
My mother laughs about this. I admire her for her attitude.
Brain shrinkage, Dave, it's coming. Can you imagine what this column's going to look like when your brain is the size of a walnut?
DAVE SAYS:
I'm not worried, Kerry. When my brain shrivels to the size of a walnut we'll finally be on equal footing. Except I suspect the squirrels got after your walnut years ago.
If you had burned a few brain cells reading the whole story on that scientific study, you'd have learned that men start out with a bigger brain to begin with. Around age 40, the scientists said, the volume of brain in the average guy's frontal region settles back to about the level of the average woman's. Nature's little way of evening the score.
The frontal area of the brain, as the story says, is where we deal with ``attention, abstract thinking, reasoning, mental flexibility and impulse control.''
Might that imply, Kerry, that men have a 40-year head start on women in mental processes that involve being reasonable? Could I consider you a living testament to that research, mon ami?
Take Steve for example. He knows that the livelihood of you and your ankle-biters depends on his ability, under extreme pressure, to instantly recall intricate legal issues from tomes he read 20 years ago in law school. While hung over.
Nature enables him to do this by declining to burn precious brain cells remembering where you've stashed that extra tube of Crest.
The trouble with all these studies, Kerry, is that they deal with averages and generalities. Which makes them, in general, useless when applied to individuals. I work with women whose intelligence frightens me. I work with others who make it easy to understand why they buy their stockings knit together into one piece, rather than in pairs.
I'm sure you can say the same for guys you work with. Especially me.
But I hope you remember that I'm the one who is forever fixing your spelling and helping you find the right places for those rascally little commas that you tend to sprinkle through your work, like so many cloves on a fat country ham.
You can repay me for this when brain shrinkage has evened us up, Kerry. But I suspect we'll both be writing from the county home by then. by CNB