Welcome, especially Class of 1958

The first time I heard someone say, “I guess I’m having a senior moment,” was about 10 years ago. My cool sister-in-law uttered it when she had someone’s name on the tip of her tongue but couldn’t quite remember it. Since then, I have had countless senior moments over names, misplaced glasses and keys, and trips to the pantry where I stare at the shelves trying to remember what I came for. People tell me to write things down, and I now have several lists, 3 appointment calendars strategically placed around the house, and post-its on my computer desktop. Of course, they often get lost, too—except for the post-its, which I must log-on to see.

But even if memory too often fails me nowadays, it also manages to store odd detritus from the past (some quite useless). For example, I remember where my high school locker was, do you? I know all the words to musical jingles, such as “We are the men of Texaco, we work from Maine to Mexico… ” from the commercial at the beginning of Milton Berle’s 1950’s TV show. Now why is that?

Sometimes in the midst of daily activities, I’ll have moments of remembering pleasant things from the past. Writing about that Texaco jingle, sung by that quartet of guys dressed in service station attendant uniforms, reminds me of the time when not only was gasoline cheap, but the guy who pumped it for you also washed your windshield and asked, “Shall I check the oil?”

I started this blog to remember some of these things, moments when we were high school seniors (or at least during that decade of the 1950s) as my contribution to the Class of 1958’s golden reunion year. Next week I plan to blog about Sputnik, which also celebrated a 50^th anniversary this past fall.

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