November 2023

Memory Games & Alzheimer's Awareness 

It’s Alzheimer’s Awareness Month! Those of you who have been a part of our community for a while now may be aware of our passion and support for finding methods to prevent, treat, and hopefully one day, cure this terrible disease. Our mission is to bring you and your local memories closer, and Alzheimer’s and other forms of Dementia can take these and all other memories away. But, before I get a little more into that, I wanted to share some of our favorite classic games that tested our memories from a young age. So, without further ado, here’s our top three memory related games:

 

3. Clue

While the game of Clue is more a detective game than a “memory game”, recall is certainly important in this mystery game. Keeping straight which characters you suspected was hard enough, even if your guess was always Col. Mustard. But then, you also had to remember which rooms were suspect and which weapon was used for the crime. It was a lot to remember, even with the tiny notebook pages we all eventually ran through. To win, you had to have a nose for mystery for sure! But even Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys needed a great memory to solve their mysteries. This game helped us get better at recall without us even knowing it!

2. Simon

Simon made its debut in the 70s as a new spin on the classic school yard game “Simon Says”.  But this time, Simon had some new rules! The goal was to think fast and repeat what Simon said to do. If Clue tested our longer-term memory (an hour is a long time for a kid!) Simon definitely tested our short-term memory. With the constantly changing series of lights and sounds, we were competing against ourselves and each other, to see who could remember the hardest of combinations.

1. Memory

Of course, the most iconic memory game of all time is the one that simply calls it as it is: Memory! Though the set up could be a bit long, depending on if your friends and siblings decided to help you flip all those cards upside down or not, once you were set up, the battle of memorization commenced! Something about watching the available matches in the middle dwindle while our pile of winnings grew bigger and bigger made us forget this game was good for our minds. As kids, we would have never believed learning could be as fun as Memory was!

 

Now onto some facts about Alzheimer’s and how we can all help!

Alzheimer’s is a progressive brain disorder that currently affects more than 6 million living individuals. By 2060, this number is currently estimated to exceed 14 million. Therefore, it’s easy to imagine that everyone at least knows of someone who has or had the disease. Its primary and most well-known marker is memory loss, but it ultimately affects much more than an individuals’ memory. Our top three memory related games somewhat play into this idea. It’s hard to be strategic or deductive without full memory capacity. And this loss of memory can lead to anger, frustration, poor decisions, and personality changes, much like losing one of these games might, only on a much longer-term basis and with devastating results. 

Because of our mission, bringing awareness about Alzheimer’s Disease is something Local Vyntage is passionate about. However, on a more personal note, many members of our team have had friends and family members suffer with Alzheimer’s or other forms of Dementia, myself and our owner Chet, included. So, while bringing awareness and finding a cure is important to who and what Local Vyntage is, it is also extremely meaningful to us personally.

With our End Alzheimer’s tees, we donate $5 to the Alzheimer’s Association for every t-shirt purchased. It’s our goal to give back to both the communities we serve and the ones we don’t, because no one’s life should be without happy memories. And no one should have to experience their loved ones suffer through losing those memories, either.

To learn more about Alzheimer’s and what the Alzheimer’s Association is doing with its funding please visit https://www.alz.org/

To learn more about what Local Vyntage is doing to end Alzheimer’s, please visit: https://localvyntage.com/pages/giving-back

Happy memories of the good ol’ days bind us all together, from the silly things like board games to our biggest life events. So, let’s keep fighting for our memories together!

- Maddy

 

 

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