{"id":312608,"date":"2019-11-22T06:06:05","date_gmt":"2019-11-21T20:06:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/?p=312608"},"modified":"2019-11-22T06:06:05","modified_gmt":"2019-11-21T20:06:05","slug":"t-o-a-s-t-timeworn-old-age-senior-tales","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/t-o-a-s-t-timeworn-old-age-senior-tales\/","title":{"rendered":"T.O.A.S.T.: Timeworn Old Age Senior Tales"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Stranded on Hippocampus Highway<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>And there you are stranded on Hippocampus Highway<br \/>\ninside your brain casing trying to fix a forgotten flat tire<br \/>\nand nobody believes you when you say I\u2019ll do it my way<br \/>\ninside your neural synapses need an immediate rewire.<br \/>\nThat common old age sign you saw and knew said NO EXIT<br \/>\nyou saw it coming as a problem for years but decided to ignore<br \/>\nnow you have a memory problem and just can\u2019t seem to fix it<br \/>\noverflowing used memory banks help you continue to explore.<br \/>\nThere goes your recent memory, for just a second, but fleeting<br \/>\nnow its lost in your gray matter, a \u2018grave\u2019 gray area for sure<br \/>\neven though now to yourself you keep on constantly repeating<br \/>\nyou just don\u2019t know how long a particular memory will endure.<br \/>\nGet off hippocampus highway, take a short cut, road less traveled<br \/>\nthat is if your memory map fibers are not completely unraveled.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Another Breakdown on Hippocampus Highway<\/strong><br \/>\n\u00a0<br \/>\nSo you forgot how to do that but remember how to do this<br \/>\nOnly yesterday you did it all without thinking and at ease<br \/>\nYou can still get dressed for church but forgot how to kiss<br \/>\nremembering your best friend\u2019s name is giving you a tease.<br \/>\n\u00a0<br \/>\nAlive and well you tell all your friends and well wishers<br \/>\nhaving lots of retirement fun and enjoying my life<br \/>\nbut deep in those cerebrum and cerebellum fissures<br \/>\nyou\u2019ve forgotten the names of your kids and your wife.<br \/>\n\u00a0<br \/>\nKeeping busy, reading about particle theory and black holes<br \/>\njust can never remember the number of miles in a light year<br \/>\nwhether it was to Newport or Newcastle you carried the coals<br \/>\nand how many prongs an antelope has above and behind its ears.<br \/>\n\u00a0<br \/>\nThat\u2019s OK at least you remember how to brush your teeth<br \/>\nyou just forgot they are false and hard gums are underneath.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>***<br \/>\nJoey aka Pepe Batbon is a retired educator who taught in the CNMI, NOLA, and LVNV. He is a sonnet practitioner who enjoys stargazing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Stranded on Hippocampus Highway And there you are stranded on Hippocampus Highway inside your brain&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":28,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-312608","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-opinion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/312608","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/28"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=312608"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/312608\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=312608"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=312608"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=312608"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}