Accidental Genius

I’m at an age when little surprises me. When you reach seasoned middle-age ‘been there, seen that’ becomes the prevailing attitude. However, I was amazed—indeed somewhat shocked—when I heard about acquired savant syndrome which makes geniuses out of ordinary people following a trauma.

Take the case of a Colorado man who began playing the piano like a virtuoso after a bad pool accident. The forty-six-year-old was a very ordinary person who never had any musical training of any kind, yet after he recovered he felt the need to play the piano, which he did … like a prodigy. Music is now his life. He plays classical to pop as he sees it in his head.

Isn’t that amazing? There are only a few people in the world who have experienced this type of phenomena. An elderly woman became of prodigious artist although she never had any training in this area after being diagnosed with dementia. A young boy who was hit by a baseball now has an amazing memory for numbers and dates. A man who survived a stroke suddenly became a poet and a sculptor.

Makes me wonder if we all have artistic abilities hidden somewhere in our brains. The challenge, of course, is to bring those abilities to the forefront without having to injure ourselves. But then again, why is it only a few people who can awaken these talents, and not everyone who has a head injury of one stripe or another? Quite a conundrum for researchers.

I am somewhat envious of those who can sing since I was born totally tone deaf and thus unable to carry a tune. How I would love to become an accidental singing genius! Without having a serious brain injury, of course.

One can dream, can’t one?

 

 

Discovery
Now that I’m older, here’s what I’ve discovered:

1.I started with nothing, and I still have most of it.
2. My wild oats have turned into prunes and all-bran.
3. I finally got my head together, and now my body is falling apart.
4. Funny, I don't remember being absent-minded.
5. Funny, I don't remember being absent-minded.
6. If all is not lost, where is it?
7. It is easier to get older than it is to get wiser.
8. Some days, you're the dog; some days you're the hydrant.
9. I wish the buck stopped here; I sure could use a few.
10. Kids in the back seat cause accidents.
11. It's hard to make a comeback when you haven't been anywhere.
12. The only time the world beats a path to your door is when you're in the bathroom.
13. If God wanted me to touch my toes, he'd have put them on my knees.
14. It’s not hard to meet expenses . . . they're everywhere.
15. These days, I spend a lot of time thinking about the hereafter . . .I go somewhere to get something, and then wonder what I'm hereafter.

 

Making a Statement

My retired neighbors are both in their mid 60s. He has long gray hair and a white bear, always neatly trimmed. He used to have a gold stud in one ear, but now sports a diamond in each lobe. Of course, I am not sure that they are real diamonds, but they do shine. In any event, I assume he is trying to make a statement: Look at me, I may be aging but I can still look cool!

            Women make statements all the time with their jewelry, their hairstyles and the clothes they chose to wear. I think it’s about time men did the same. Of course, I don’t know that all men of a certain age would be comfortable with wearing jewelry in their ears! Nor would all men over 50 be willing to let their gray hair grow and then tie it in a pony tail. Yet, it is interesting that some of them want to make a statement which attests to the fact that they don’t see the need to follow the crowd.

            A nice young man of my acquaintance, i.e. my gorgeous grandson (of course, I’m not prejudiced!) had nice shoulder length blond hair. One day he decided to make a statement by shaving his head to donate the hair for a wig for a cancer patient. When I asked him what had prompted him to do that, he said that he knew a girl who was diagnosed with cancer and he wanted to show that he cared. Now, that’s what I call making an impressive statement.

             I’ve always admired people who don’t follow the crowd, who are happy doing their own thing. A woman I know who just marked her 86^th birthday celebrated by buying a new car. I love driving, she said, never had an accident and I don’t have any physical problem preventing me from having a driver’s license, so why not? Why not, indeed. She made a statement that age is not a reason to stop living.

            That should be everyone’s mantra!

           

           

 

Stop Talking

Stop talking  -- those were the words uttered by the driver of the car in which I was a passenger recently. The driver was attempting to set a different route than the one the GPS marked but the device did not accept the change. It kept selling the usual route while the driver knew that part of that road was closed to traffic. The driver lost patience and essentially told the GPS to shut up.

                That’s where we are now, arguing with devices as more and more of them talk to us.

                Is that something we really need? I mean, if my new clothes dryer tells me that my load will be totally dry in two minutes ten seconds, how much difference does that make in my life? I see it as simply annoying.

                And don’t get me started about the likes of Alexa – let’s face it these devices are spies reporting to their masters what goes on in households all over the land so that ads can be targeted and thus be more efficient. These things are sold as being essential because they can provide information but they are far from essential!  I know many people who have gotten rid of them because they invade on privacy which we are slowly losing.

                But millions of “connected” home gadgets with voice recognition capability – for lights, doors, stoves, refrigerators, etc. -- will be sold this year alone. We no longer need to move a finger  we simply tell a machine to do things for us. Some will say that it frees us for more meaningful activities, but does it?

Does it simply mean that robots are getting ready to take over the world as we know it? As employers are bemoaning the fact that they have trouble finding workers it looks like we’re running out of human beings. As a result will automation become more and more part of our lives? Could such devices prove to be smarter than us humans? 

I doubt that automation will mean that machines can make decisions like humans do. However, we may be surprised if they simply learn to ignore us because we’ve told them to stop talking once too many times!