Food For Thought

Think of your immediate and extended family. What are your fondest memories? Who were the ones who made everything seem okay? Was it your favorite uncle? Your aunt who will let you do something when your own mom explicitly disallowed? Or was it one of your grandparents who enjoyed rubbing it in your parent's face when she overrode your mom's steadfast stand on not letting you go to a water park with your cousins because you did something naughty?

Well, of all my family members aside from those immediate ones like my sister, mom and dad, my grandparents were probably the ones who made the biggest impressions on me as a child. They don't judge, and they don't spank you even when they were angry. I suppose now as an adult, I suspect that they never spanked me possibly due to back pain or arthritis or some other physical ailment.

Just like your parents, you never ever imagined that the thought of sexual activity would ever cross their minds, right? I mean, even though I knew from previous studies that there was a tiny "epidemic" going on in America's elderly hospices (aka retirement home, elderly home, nursing home) where some of the elderly are catching sexually transmitted diseases, I still believe that old people simply don't have sex. After all, my reasoning is that old people for the most part don't have the blood pressure high enough to sustain such cardiovascular-heavy activity.

Until today.

In this week's New England Journal of Medicine, a comprehensive nationwide study led by the University of Chicago's Dr. Stacy Tessler Lindau found that seniors in their 70's and 80's in America are very sexually active!

Not exactly the kind of eye-opener I want ever in my life. Now I feel like I gotta go rent Bambi and watch that tonight. Twice.