Elder Exams

As Carter was taking her second exam today in a week filled with exams I sat happily stitching with my needlepoint friends at my Local Needlepoint shop’s Christmas celebration. The table of food groaned under the weight of the ham biscuits and eggnog and requisite Christmas cookies. Three of the Stitcher’s Table Advisors were also celebrating December birthdays so we also had a Southern Pecan cake. I had thrown in the healthy eating towel last week and now am just enjoying the holiday like a normal person.

One of my friends Elizabeth said she was thankful that she never had to take another exam. Since all at the table could qualify for AARP we quickly agreed. Just as we were celebrating that small win for being old one member corrected us.

“No, I have one exam I still need to take,” Vickie said. “It’s the one they give you when you want to get into a retirement community.” One of the birthday girls, Ann, who is about my mother’s age agreed, “that is a much harder exam. You have to remember a list of five things they tell you about ten minutes after they told them to you.”

Suddenly fear overtook me. I am years away from a retirement home, but I already am not so good at remembering a list of things you just told me. Now if you want me to tell you the names of all my teachers in grade school I could do that in the blink of an eye, but not the five items Russ asked me to get at the grocery right before I left the house.

Exams have never been my thing and I thought once I left school I was free from the pressure of studying for them, but no… Apparently I have the next twenty five years to study if I ever want to pass a retirement home exam so that someone can wipe the drool from my face in my waning years I am going to have to start practicing memory tests now. Next time you see me ask me for this list of items to see how good my memory is: Scissors, ribbon, Bourbon, the Mississippi River and the color green.

If only the examiners would ask me what the winning Mah Jongg hands were, I could do that all day. Oh no, I’ve already forgotten what was in the list and I just wrote it.