As if getting old weren't bad enough

To listen to all the commercials on TV, you'd think that most of America is desperately ill. In the part of my brain that usually processes and evaluates information (the frontal cortex), I know that can't be the case (I also have an Internet connection and can log on to the Center for Disease Control and all those research sites to get the facts if I want). It's that other side of my brain, the limbic system, where all those pesky neurons in my hippocampus play with my emotions that concerns me. Let me explain. Just before falling asleep in my easy chair I was watching one of my favorite mid-day TV shows, and in rapid succession I was bombarded by commercials for COPD, erectile dysfunction, age-related macular degeneration, sensorineural hearing loss, psoriasis and Crohn's disease. I don't know how I managed to doze off, but I did, and while drifting along, alone with my subconscious in tow, I went back in time to my days in the advertising agency business.

I was sitting in my agency's conference room with my old pal, Jack Mather, and we were scratching away on our yellow pads. Suddenly Jack looked up, took a swig from the tumbler of Jack Daniels before him and said, "Steph, we're not thinking clearly about this." (This was a job we had to do for a pharmaceutical company client that had just received the go ahead from the FDA to market their new wonder drug that would supposedly cure stupidity). This is a dream, remember.

Jack went on. "We need a new name for this pill, but it seems that all the really Latin-based names aren't available. Neither are the memorable ones like 'Serutan' (Nature's spelled backwards)." I said, "Well we don't want, Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis that's for sure!" Jack took another drink. You want to run that by me again?" "Sure," I said. "It's a real full scientific name for a disease that causes inflammation in the lungs owing to the inhalation of very fine silica dust." "Eureka. THAT gives me an idea." Jack jumped to his feet. "We need something really short and really memorable. After all, this is a drug for stupid people who probably have short attention spans and a reduced capacity for remembering long names."

So we began the process of something we called, 'out-of-body writing' (kind of like a Ouija Board where your hands are magically pulled in one direction or another). We threw some names back and forth like 'Smartup' and 'Iggone' (for ignorance gone) but finally it came down to two: 'IQupinol' and 'Einsteinme'. We agreed to stop for the night and go to our respective homes, turn on our TVs and watch all the disease-a-mercials, note our favorites and come back the next day for more brain-storming.

We were to write them all down on, of course, our yellow pads. I must tell you that the yellow pad was Jack's 'open sesame' to unlock the universe of his creative fertile mind. He occasionally used the IBM Selectric typewriter because he liked the tactile feel of the keys, but he also enjoyed the 'clackety-clackety' sound the revolving IBM type ball made as it responded to his fingers' commands.  I remember driving to the office the next morning and unlocking the door and brewing a fresh pot of coffee in advance of Jack's entrance, which was always different. Sometimes he would come through the door like d'Artagnan, the energetic would-be Muskateer. Other times it was one of his many favorite literary characters. You just never knew. I waited, anxiously, thinking of all the diseases we had discussed and their respective pill cures.

Suddenly, I felt a warm sensation on my crotch area. "Oh, no," I thought to myself. "It's involuntary urination!" Then, I awoke to find that one of my cats had tipped over my coffee cup that was wedged between my sleepy hands. Jack would have laughed himself silly at the sight and so would I except for the fact that beside me lay a coffee-drenched yellow pad with all my notes for this article. By the way, I forgot to tell you that in my dream we never settled on a name for the anti-stupid drug, but given the deluge of disease-a-mercials on TV these days, I'm inclined to call it, the 'Off-button.'

Stephan Helgesen is a former career U.S. diplomat who lived and worked in thirty different countries, specializing in export promotion. He is now a political analyst and strategist and author of nine books and over 1,000 articles on politics, the economy and social trends. He can be reached at: stephan@stephanhelgesen.com