Of Presidents & Precocious Fifth Graders
I’ve taken to reading studies on keeping the brain youthful.
Music. Language classes. Memorization. All supposed remedies for aging gray matter.
Since my eight-year-old granddaughter regularly beats me at The Memory-Matching Game of Baby Animals, I elected to try the third option…memorization.
Which is what landed me at a nearby Presidential Library and Museum as a docent.
Handed a thick notebook of facts to memorize, I donned a red blazer and marched through a time capsule of U.S. History.
Could I remember the term of a Congressional Representative vs a Senator or who the first President born in a hospital was (FYI, the answer is Jimmy Carter)?
Could I be trusted to recite the flight range of Marine One, the presidential helicopter, or what the pilots were called (answer: Nighthawks). Aside: If I were eighteen and wanted to fly a helicopter, I’d want to be a Nighthawk. I mean, who wouldn’t want to be called that?
I felt certain that some smug fifth-grade honor student would catch me off-guard by listing the first seven presidents and pausing expectantly in front of her other forty classmates, daring me to name the eighth. Or perhaps embarrass me by reciting all of the Constitutional Amendments when I got stuck on the first five.
But, I could rattle off that Amy Carter roller-skated in the East Room and Susan Ford held her high school prom there. Luci Baines Johnson watusi-ed with Steve McQueen and Tricia Nixon wed Dwight Eisenhower’s grandson in the White House Rose Garden under a custom gazebo (the same grandson who prompted the title of “Camp David”).
You know, the important stuff.
What I’ve come to appreciate is that trying does count for something. “If at first you don’t succeed…” still rings true.
Nothing has changed, while at the same time, everything has changed in my life. That contradiction somehow feels reassuring.
So, when you’re a little afraid of something new (or someone new, like the ten-year-old mini-genius) you’re probably doing something right. And healthy. And life-giving to your brain. Do it. Today.
Now, I’m going back to my granddaughter for the Ultimate Baby Animal Smackdown Match. If at first I don’t succeed…
xo,
Carole
PS I was lucky enough in a past life, to meet the late Henry Haller, a former White House Chef who had served five presidents. Beyond charming and in his Swiss accent he remarked, “Aw, Carole, you spell zee {sic} name zee {sic} same as my wife.”
