My Brain Is Shrinking!

And so is yours...

Remember the children’s toy that had a plastic page that you could draw and write on and then by lifting it you could make whatever you had just drawn or written instantly disappear?

It was called the Magic Slate and lately I’ve realized my brain seems to have become one. My short term memory loss is accelerating. It’s the usual stuff… “What did I just come in the room for?” “Where did I put that?” And in response to Jo, “I know I was supposed to do that but I forgot.”

I’m not panicked but I am annoyed and dealing with my brain’s size shrinking— all ours do as we age —has led me to realize that I now have the equivalent of a Magic Slate inside of my head.

There’s the blunt stylus (Weren’t they usually red?) that I know inscribes the thought or task I have told my brain I intend to carry out, but in just seconds whatever was imprinted on my brain with it has disappeared. Ok, I’m 77 and I know that memory loss is a typical part of getting older but here’s what keeps me confident. I figure that as long as I remember I forgot, I’m Ok!

Computers are like us and we’re like them. We pack both full of stuff and there can come a point when there is no more room to cram in any more stuff. Of course you can always purge a computer of what’s using up its memory and create more room for storage or you can just go buy a new machine. Our species hasn’t come up with an implant of extra RAM for us YET! I’m sure Elon Musk is working on it.

I’m not telling you anything that you likely don’t already know or might already be experiencing. You may have your own Magic Slate now squatting inside your hippocampus (In Greek that’s a seahorse. In our brains it’s shaped like one and is the repository for our memory. The word also makes me think of college and the ballet sequence in Walt Disney’s Fantasia.)

And there’s more about the history of the Magic Slate than I knew and it’s the story of how one of the all-time inexpensive toys became an important counter espionage tool during the Cold War. And it happened not once but twice.

The first time was in the 1950s after a microphone was found planted in a gift from some Russian children to the American ambassador in Moscow— it was inside a wooden replica of the Great Seal of the United States no less. After that discovery there was alarm and suspicion that doubtless other bugs were hidden in the embassy.

Someone came up with the idea that since conversations inside the building were likely being heard beyond its walls, the staff needed to communicate silently among themselves. A shipment of Magic Slates from America provided the work around and also had the added benefit of leaving no trace of the information that was being written and shared on them.

In the 1980s more concealed listening devices were again uncovered in the embassy and this time newspaper reports of how Magic Slates were being used to thwart Soviet spying spurred sales of the toy at home.

The manufacturer of Etch A Sketch suggested (perhaps jealousy) to the State Department that their product would be an even better device to deter the Russians— Ok, I made that up. Have you ever tried to write a single word on an Etch A Sketch?

But back to my increasing short term memory issues and I’m surprised that I remember this joke.. 

A doctor tells his patient, “Well I’m afraid I have good news and bad news. The bad news is, you are suffering from short-term memory loss.”

The patient replies, “Ouch!… So, tell me what’s the bad news?”