Exercising The Mental Muscles

Chalk in hand, Mary Burns stands at the ready.

“OK,” she tells the dozen-plus folks gathered at Richardson (Texas) Senior Center. “Name all the words and phrases you can that have ‘head’ in them.”

Words fly through the air: Headline, headlight, heads or tails, heads up, head first, headache, shrunken head, copperhead, overhead, fat head, pothead, headache.

“Beachhead!” someone calls out. A pause. “That dates me.” Another voice answers: “You shouldn’t worry about that here!”

The room laughs. The exercise has served its purposes: breaking the ice and stimulating cerebrums.

Every Monday at the center, seniors gather for these Mental Aerobics. The idea is the brainchild of Kay Paggi, a former Odyssey of the Mind coach who works as a therapist and geriatric care manager. Before she started Mental Aerobics, Paggi was working with seniors at a wellness center in Plano, Texas. They told her they couldn’t remember things.

“It’s like computer overload; they just know so much,” she says. “Their ability to think, to use judgment, continues to build through life.”

But she’d see seniors retire, then start watching TV and stop balancing their checkbooks. They’d say, “My daughter will do this or that for me.” They bought into the myth of “I’m older - I can’t do this any more.”

Baloney, Paggi says. “If I sat down in a chair tomorrow and said I couldn’t walk, in a month I couldn’t.” Maybe, she mused, they don’t think as well because they’re not using their minds.

Enter Mental Aerobics. In an early session, she asked seniors to tell two things: Their name and, using its first letter, an adjective to describe themselves. (Someone named Ann, for instance, could say “amazing.”) As each person’s turn came, he or she would repeat the names and descriptions of each person before. They all did much better than they thought they would, Paggi says.

Monday before Election Day, participants complete puzzles and quizzes about U.S. presidents. Everyone receives papers with 20 names on the left, 20 on the right. Men in one list lost presidential elections; the others won. The object: Match them.

Try this: Whom did Grover Cleveland lose to in 1888?

The women at my table seem especially knowledgeable. Cynthia Maddox and Joann Perkins have been here before. But it’s the first time for Virginia McGrew.

“I’m married to a gardener, so in effect I’m a widow,” she says with a little smile. “I have an awful lot of time. I find I can’t retain when I try to memorize. I don’t know if it’s senility or what.”

When she works puzzles at home, it’s quiet. Here, she’ll have to get used to the noise.

“Part of the fun is sharing answers, not having to sit by yourself and think,” Mary Burns tells her.

Fred Buelow, 78, has been coming since Paggi started Mental Aerobics in Plano. Retired from a very peopleoriented administrative job, he lost that mental stimulation. But he’s found it again.

“People who are just starting, they’re afraid of answering with the wrong answer,” he says. “When you’re there awhile, you recognize it doesn’t matter if the answer’s wrong. Nobody’s going to ridicule you.”

He has noticed changes in several participants throughout the weeks. One woman used to be very quiet. Now she’s speaking out a lot more.

Burns, who runs a respite-care service for seniors, first came to Mental Aerobics with a client. For several weeks, she just sat there. Finally, she decided to try answering some of the questions.

“I’ve learned to do some things, like math problems, I wouldn’t have tried before,” she says. “You find out your brain still works.”