Introduction
“What did you do in the war, Daddy?” That was more or less the pretext of writing this memoir. At least it started out that way.
Wrong “war” you say? You’re right. Most people who remember that saying are thinking about World War II, and even though I was crawling around in diapers at that time, I guess it applies to my story because the First Gulf War was my war. Okay, I wasn’t in the active military, but I was there in Saudi Arabia working for a civilian military contractor and living on the U.S. Air Force’s housing compound, and I did “participate.”
I had thought many times of writing down my adventures in Saudi Arabia for my own amusement later on in my life, but once I started putting things down on paper, more and more interesting tidbits about living and working in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia came into my thoughts. I remembered things that I hadn’t thought of in years.
As of the new year 2009, it’s been thirteen years since I left Saudi Arabia in the fall of 1996, and when I started having what I call limited memory or short term memory loss, I knew that I had better get it down on paper and as soon as possible.
Also, the fact that my mother who passed away in 2001 had dementia when she died of metastasized cancer got me interested in Alzheimer’s research. For the past thirteen years I have volunteered with the “Memory on Aging” program at Washington University here in St. Louis, Missouri. I participate in verbal, photographic, computer and memory exercises as well as other tests on a yearly basis. In addition, I take part in MRI, PET Scans, spinal taps, and other assorted medical tests.
One of the recommendations to improve memory retention is to keep your mind occupied at all waking moments. Relaxation is not a recommended activity for your brain. Experts suggest reading books and magazines, doing crossword puzzles, or Sudoku, or just thinking … anything to keep your mind engaged, keep those electrical charges in your brain flashing.
So I started reading books, and as I’ve always been a war buff I started with war memoirs like the six-volume history of The Second World War by Winston Churchill, along with murder mysteries and espionage novels by Vince Flynn, Tom Clancy, Daniel Silva, Robert Ludlum and Frederick Forsyth--anything that kept my interest and that I didn’t want to put down.
When I can’t sleep at night, I get up and read for a couple of hours, or watch a movie. I take a book or my Nook" reader with me to the movie theater and read while I wait for the movie to start. Bowling in between each frame. Restaurants same thing, while waiting for my meal,