Mitch's Gears are Slipping; It's an Age Thing

 

by Pa Rock

Senior Citizen Journalist

I am seventy-five years-old and I notice signs of a decrease in my mental alertness almost daily.  Moving from one room to another in my own home requires more time and care than it did just a couple of years ago.  Even just standing up can be a physical ordeal with joints popping and the attendant grunts and groans that leave me sounding like a jalopy that has been parked out in the weather for too long - and if I rise too quickly, I'm going over - that's just the way it is.

Over the course of the last three years I have managed to fall and break each of my arms.

I still know who I am, and where I am, and I can organize my thoughts to where they make some semblance of sense, but that process takes longer than it once did.  A lady whom I dated many years ago and who was three years my junior, passed away recently from complications with dementia. The last time I saw her, a couple of years ago, she had been fine and her quick wit had been impressive.  Health issues can appear and escalate quickly when a person in in their seventies.  I recognize that, but tomorrow I may not be able to recognize it.

I am too old in my mid-seventies to hold a key position in any occupation.  It is time for me to begin limiting my activities and focusing on personal matters and life issues that need my attention while I still have the time and ability to get things in order.  My time for running the free world has passed, and I am cognizant enough of my own abilities to know and admit that.

Unfortunately, however, some people do not know when it is time to hang it up and step aside to let the next generation have their rightful turn at making the world go round.

Mitch McConnell, the Republican minority leader in the United States Senate, is obviously a case in point.  McConnell fell at an event at a hotel in Washington, DC, last March, and was away from "work" for several weeks as he went through in-patient physical therapy and an extended recovery process.  Then last month he suffered a fifteen-second brain fart while holding a press conference, a lapse in his ability to speak or appear cognizant in which he had to ultimately be led away from the podium by a staff member.  Yesterday, at a press conference in his home state of Kentucky, McConnell again zoned out, this time for thirty-seconds, and again an aide had to step in an help him through the situation.

And those were just the public instances in which he happened to be speaking and was the center of attention.  It would be highly likely that other instances have occurred at home or in his office when he was not in the direct public eye.  Mitch's cognitive gears are slipping, and at eighty-one-years-of-age that is entirely normal and to be expected.

Eighty is too damned old to be serving in critical public leadership positions, and hell, so is seventy-five!

Tell me I'm wrong!