The moon is still up this morning. The shadow cast by the house is dark and the outline is sharp, as if it has been drawn there by a fine point pen. The green boxwood hedge appears charcoal grey. The tin roof on my shop quietly shimmers in the moonlight. The whole world is still.

Even my brain is still. As I’m writing these words my brain is actually on break, almost like being on strike.

“Come on brain. Think! I need an idea for today’s story.”

“Nope. I’m just gonna chill for now.”

“You can’t do that. I have a column to write.”

“So! That’s your problem.”

I don’t know about you, but the older I get the more I seem to be divided from my brain. The more I open the fridge and stare. The more I forget what I was gonna say. The more my brain just flat out lets me down.

The brain has approximately 86 billion neurons on stand-by at any given moment, ready to go to work.

Let’s say you’re standing at the kitchen counter. You’re not sure if you want a PBJ for lunch, or maybe a ham and cheese. That’s when your neurons go into action.

You’re thinking and your neurons are burning up the superhighway inside the brain. Millions of them at any one given moment. They check with your stomach. They look inside your memory card to see what you had for lunch yesterday. They’re weighing the options and providing you with information.

“Hmm! I think I’ll have the PBJ.”

That’s how it’s supposed to work.

Right now, my neurons are laughing at me. One of them just called me an old geezer.

I was talking with one of my nursery buddies this week. We both retired within a couple of weeks of each other. We’ve stayed in touch on a fairly regular basis.

We got to talking about how much we’ve forgotten in such a short time. Like the names of some of the people we knew over the years. These were not casual acquaintances. These were people that we sold to or bought from for twenty years or more. Customers that we talked to by phone three and four times a week. People whom, when we did see them, we went out to lunch and asked about the wife, kids, and the dog.

You’d think that the brain would file that information away in a safe place. You’d think I could come up with his name.

Steve asked me, “What was that guy’s name?”

I tried. “Oh gosh, I know exactly who you’re talking about.”

We promised to call back if one of us came up with his name. So far, nothing. My brain is on vacation.

The signs are everywhere. For example, my brain can’t keep up with my glasses. I am at that point in life when at times I cannot see with them, and I cannot see without them. So, I’m always taking my glasses off and laying them down.

I can go a couple of hours without thinking about my glasses. I might take them off and lay them on the side table next to the couch. That’s easy. But if I’m, say, cleaning out a closet, I might lay them down anywhere. I’m moving back and forth through the house. I need to see something up close and off they come, like when I’m sorting through the contents of a box.

All this time, I’m back and forth from the closet to the kitchen to the bathroom to the bedroom to the attic, and back to the closet. By the time I get ready to use my glasses again, I can’t find them. I retrace all my steps. I haven’t left the house. No glasses in sight.

The issue is that without my glasses it’s hard to find my glasses. I have decent mid-range vision without them, and by mid-range I mean 3 feet. But beyond that distance things start to get fuzzy.

I’m trying to use my brain on two levels. One is, I’m trying to “see” in my mind where I laid them down. But I’ve been back and forth so many places, that’s not working.

The other is that I’m looking around at every flat surface in the house trying to make out the familiar outline of a pair of glasses. I always lay them down flat with the earpieces open, the lenses standing vertically.

The problem is that I have a lot of dark colors in my house. The couch is brown. The kitchen counter has a sort of brown stone look to it. The tablecloth is dark green and black checkered.

The frames on my glasses are black, which means that they blend in like a chameleon with nearly every possible place I may have put them.

I can kill 30 minutes looking for them. I’m turning on extra lights all through the house. I hold my hands to my temples and close my eyes tight trying to squeeze some hint or sign out of my pitiful peabrain.

When I finally found them, they were on the closet shelf above my head. I remember putting them up there so they wouldn’t be in the way. My brain should know that.

They say that a man my age should learn something new just to keep the old mental juices flowing. Some people play word games. Some read constantly. I hear that memorizing poetry or song lyrics will help stimulate the brain.

I am not cultured enough to memorize poetry. “Now I lay me down to sleep” is about as far as I got. There was this one poem about a man from Nantucket I used to know. Naw! Probably not going there.

As for lyrics, I have always stunk at lyrics. I can never remember them. I know some phrases from certain songs on the radio. My grandkids can sing every word to every Troll song at decibels loud enough to damage my ear drums.

I used to know all the words to “Bye, Bye, American Pie. Drove my Chevy to the levy but the levy was dry. . .” But you could be tagged as a moron if you didn’t know this song. I had to work at it. There were always parts that I got wrong.

One of my most embarrassing moments in my entire life was when I flubbed the words to a song in a talent show. I knew that song. I could sing it blindfolded. But on that stage, my brain froze up like a Dairy Queen blizzard. I couldn’t remember the first word, much less the entire song.

Bottom line, I’ve gotta come up with something to stimulate the old noggin. I don’t want to completely lose my mental faculties before I’m 70. In fact, I’d like to be 90 and still have my brain functioning, a sharp memory and quick wit.

Right now, I’d settle for finishing this episode of Georgia Bred. I’m still waiting for my brain to kick in with a half decent idea to write about.

Hold on! I’ve laid my glasses down somewhere. I can’t see.