BOTOX, pantyhose and the Fountain of Youth

I’m not saying I want to be irradiated, but I’m just thinking.  Maybe it’s not such a bad thing.  At the very least, I foresee a call for human volunteers in the near future. 

See, the journal “Oecologia” is reporting that the forests around Chernobyl remain heavily contaminated with radiation from the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster; and the unexpected benefit is that they still look good.

Yeah. 

In the journal, Tim Mousseau, co-director of the Chernobyl and Fukushima Research Initiatives at the University of South Carolina, states that 28 years after that explosion in the Ukraine, the tree trunks there have not decomposed at a normal rate.

I’m not sure I can say the same thing about myself after a quarter century with Mr. Plath.  I don’t mean to suggest he’s radioactive.  I’m just saying that I have to utilize mirrors and smoke; practice selective perception and reverse anorexia for the sake of my own self-esteem.  Happy thoughts.  La la la la la!  Myopia is my friend.

Mousseau goes on to say that "apart from a few ants, the dead tree trunks were largely unscathed…[they] seem unchanged” even decades after the catastrophe.

Hmmm…so radiated tree trunks were, in effect, preserved.  Unaffected by what we often call the ravages of time…  Typically, a fallen tree disintegrates in about 10 years…but these trees were protected from normal deterioration.

Um hmmm…

And I love nature!  It appears I could have been hanging out in the Ukrainian woods to retain my youthful self.

And there’s this:  How do you suppose those researchers came to verify their observations?  A double-blind survey using pantyhose, of course.

To find out what was happening — or, more accurately, what wasn't happening — the research team collected hundreds of samples of leaf litter from forest floors that were not contaminated by radiation.  And they stuffed those leaves into bags lined with panty hose!

Why jam the uncontaminated leaves into pantyhose, you ask?  To keep out the insects!  Duh!  Everyone knows pantyhose keep the bugs away!  

Of course, that’s not why we originally crammed ourselves into pantyhose.  We sucked it up and forced ourselves, like so much Jimmy Dean sausage, into that run-resistant, reinforced toe, active support, control top torturous “legwear” to, to…why did we wear pantyhose? 

Like Trappist Monks we punished ourselves Monday through Friday with those heat-producing, skin-pattern-inducing implements of self-flagellation.  Was it vanity?  Peer pressure?  Selfless devotion to scientific research?

Anyway, back in the Ukraine, the researchers distributed those nylon-lined bags of leaves around the Chernobyl area and waited nine months.  Just because. 

And according to the study, samples of leaf litter that were placed in the highly contaminated areas showed 40 percent less decomposition than samples that were placed in uncontaminated sites. 

That’s right; it’s an unexpected outcome of radiation poisoning.  The degree of decay was inversely proportional to the degree of radioactive contamination!  Or, as we might put it in Oklahoma, the more things get toxified, the better they look!

Kind of makes you want to sleep with your microwave, doesn’t it?

If I had known all those years, that by squeezing pine needles and deciduous debris into my Hanes Silk Reflections I could have preserved my formerly youthful and svelte self…  Oh, nostalgia!
 
Since I have slid past the threshold of youth, skittered right through middle age like a hockey puck on ice and now find myself clinging to the doorjamb of naturally decomposing organic material, I am ever on the lookout for anything, anything that will put me in league with a Ukrainian tree. 

Don’t click your tongue, Dear Reader.  I’m not so far out of the norm.  It wasn’t that long ago we were all feigning disbelief at the idea of sticking ourselves in the forehead with a syringe full of the botulinum toxin – AKA botulism, a lethal poison – AKA Botox.  Now a bunch of us Baby Boomers have “migraine headaches” and “need” the stuff for “medicinal purposes.”

So it’s not that far-fetched, this nuclear meltdown advantage.  You won’t laugh so loud when you wake up one day looking like the Portrait of Dorian Gray and I remain fixed in time at my current state of disintegration.  Ha!

At the very least, I’m going back to my L’eggs.  

I left it in the living room

The scene:  Baby Boomer working diligently at her desk.  She’s concentrating, writing, editing, rewriting, working toward deadline.  She’s a master.  A wizard.   

Then, a pause.  She pushes away from her keyboard, jumps to her feet and dashes - dashes mind you - downstairs into the living room to get … something.   

Something very important.  

Something warranting a dash for goodness sake. 

What the heck did she go there for?!!! 

Then, because the room looks familiar but the goal remains enigmatic, resignation sets in.  Shoulders sag.  She must turn and climb the stairs with a little wrinkle in her brow while reviewing the circumstances of her journey.  She retraces her steps in faint hope of regenerating the same urgency she felt so … urgently just moments ago. 

Let’s see…I was sitting right here.  Writing my column.  Then I jumped up and ran to the living room for…for…Dang it!  Why did I get up and run out of the room?! 

She tries to calm herself.  It’s no big deal, she says.  Everyone does that, right?  We’re all jumping up from our desks, hurrying around the house pointedly seeking something, only to have to shrug, abandon the mission and settle down again.   

Perhaps it’s not material, but an esoteric sort of metaphysical thing we seek.  Inner meaning.  Purpose of life.  No need to prowl the world, thank God, when peace of mind is within your own home, your metaphorical self.  Perhaps our built-in internal yearning for depth of experience compels us … OK.  I’m not buying it either.  

Pretty sure it was more mundane than that.  I was probably looking for that new pencil with the fresh eraser I just bought at…where’d I get that thing?  More important, where’d I put that thing?  I don’t know.  Doesn’t matter.  Look!  A squirrel!  

But so what?  Everyone misplaces her car keys now and then.  No need to worry until you misplace your car!  Let me just check.  Yep, it’s there, safe in the garage. 

I’m OK, I tell ya!  

But you can see why I glommed onto “brain games” with millions of other Boomers.   

Thank God, I thought.  These intellectual games will save my withered walnut of a brain from further shrinkage!  If I race around these mental agility wheels frantically enough I won’t have to careen around the house like a pinball.  Sign me up.  I’ll do it! 

I jumped in with both lobes.  I couldn’t wait for the “positive and often remarkable results” including “better face-name recall, faster problem-solving skills and a quicker memory.” 

Oh yeah, just 10-15 minutes a day of synapse gymnastics will “reorganize my brain by confronting it with new challenges,” thereby improving my ability “to dynamically allocate attention,” not to mention split infinitives.  

I began to feel top heavy in a hurry. 

But wait.  What’s this from the NewYorker?  “Brain Games are Bogus.”  

Uh oh. 

See that headline’s a problem for me.  I’ve devoted some serious time to feeling all good and smug about my calisthenics for neuroplasticity.  I have an emotional investment in brain games.  These brain games may be the final fragile filament holding my pale gray matter intact!  You can’t take away my brain games!  

And what does the New Yorker know anyway?  

Oh, right.  They collected information from analysts at the University of Oslo and Georgia Tech who investigated claims made in the multi-million dollar brain game industry and came up with a pretty big goose egg.  

Sure, they say, diligent hours of playing games supposedly designed to improve “working memory and fluid intelligence” does produce growth in one’s performance on those games.   

But that’s it.  The scientists who gathered all of the best research—twenty-three investigations of memory training by teams around the world—and employed a standard statistical technique (called meta-analysis) conclude:  "The games may yield improvements in the narrow task being trained, but this does not transfer to broader skills like the ability to read or do arithmetic, or to other measures of intelligence.” 

In short, “Playing the games makes you better at the games … but not at anything anyone might care about in real life." 

Well that’s just great.   

Excuse me for a moment.  I have to get something from the living room.