Why, when I lose my car keys, I blame pro wrestling

I happened to flip the TV to some pro wrestling the other day, and watched about 5 minutes of it out of curiosity.  For a guy who once was obsessed with Verne Gagne's All-Star Wrestling as a kid,  I wonder why I just can't be bothered by it anymore.

I'd rather Google and YouTube old stories and clips of old-school wrestling. The other night, I found myself reading up on some of the more tragic tales of wrestling, such as the alarming amount of wrestlers who die young, and some individual stories, like Buck Zum Hofe and his problems.

Then there was the story of Verne himself, about how he killed a fellow nursing home resident, without knowing what he had done because of his dementia. A little more Googling and I found stories of old-time wrestlers suffering from Alzheimer's-like conditions.  I can't help but think that's a trend that won't go away.

The old-school wrestlers didn't take nearly as many bumps as those today, and the chair-shots of yesteryear were pulled quite a bit by the givers - not the case at all today.  But the old-schoolers wrestled on more nights, and many had longer-lasting careers.

It got me to worry a little.  I took some bumps in my day.  Having wrestled for about 1 1/2 years, plus all of the training, it's probably over a thousand.  My trainer, in my opinion, made us take too many bumps at workout.  I learned to take a good back bump; it bothered me that he'd make us go through a bunch in each session.  I was quite good at not hitting my head on the mat from a back bump, yet I left many a workout with a headache.

I've also suffered two non-diagnosed concussions in my youth.  How do I know they were concussions if they were non-diagnosed? Well, one of them because I nearly lost consciousness, and the other because I actually did.  I also took a nap right after the latter, not knowing then that this is the last thing you want to do after getting knocked out. A quick Google search confirms that these qualify as concussions, despite the nasty argument my ex-wife once drew me into because I had the audacity to claim that I knew these were concussions despite not having seen a doctor in either case.

But I digress. The point of all this is that someday I may indeed suffer from dementia or Alzheimer's-like symptoms, or Alzheimer's itself.  My 95-year-old grandmother doesn't recognize me, and my 99-year-old grandfather's mind was clearly deteriorating over his last few years.

Whether that process will happen to me, and whether it will happen at a younger age because of the concussions and head-bumps, I do not know.  I guess I'm hoping it's like smoking, where a couple of years of smoking over the course of a lifetime probably isn't going to kill you young.

But every now and then, when I have a "senior moment" at my age of 47, the thought does occur.