Table of contents for May 2017 in Reader's Digest

EDITOR SPOTLIGHT: Andrea Au Levitt ONE DAY DURING MY FIRST PREGNANCY, I spotted the words advanced maternal age scrawled across my medical records. Advanced maternal age? I knew I had waited longer than most of my friends to have kids. And I knew I hadn’t been doing enough to help myself stay youthful. But I wasn’t even close to 40! Here’s the funny thing: Once Alexa was born, I didn’t worry about my age. Who can stop to think about getting older when you’re busy playing Twister with “Flexi-Lexi” or saving her sister, Arya, from a pizza-stealing peacock at the zoo? In fact, when Alexa became aware of time and asked my age, I had to stop and calculate it. (Her reply: “Is that as old as the dinosaurs?”) It…

SATURDAY NIGHT had just turned into Sunday morning, and Tim Abernathy, 47, walked off the dance floor at the Menlo Barn Dance near Summerville, Georgia. He sat down in a folding chair to rest with his wife, Tina Abernathy, next to him. Then something felt wrong. His throat got tight, then tighter. He grabbed Tina’s hand, then crashed to the floor. “His eyes had rolled back,” said Tina. “His lips had turned blue and were getting darker.” The band stopped playing. People started yelling, but nobody stepped forward to act. Someone finally did. It was Johnny “Digger” Tucker. He swiped his fingers through Tim’s mouth, thinking he could be choking. He started beating on Tim’s chest. Then he began mouth-to-mouth. More pounding. More mouth-tomouth. Then, finally, Tim drew a breath.…

WHY DOES ANYONE GO on spring vacation? It seems odd to fly to a tropical destination at the very moment one of the great astonishments of life on Earth is taking place right at home. When friends tell me their spring-vacation plans, they mention “escape.” Really? You want to escape spring? That’s like fleeing paradise. GEORGE BALL, chairman and CEO of Burpee, in the Wall Street Journal GRACE IS MY FAVORITE church word. A state of being ... Something you can obtain. Perfection is out of reach. But grace—grace you can reach for. ELIZABETH SCOTT, author, in her book Living Dead Girl WHEN I LOOK AT THE INTERNET, I feel the same as when I’m walking through Coney Island. It’s like carnival barkers, and they all sit out there and…

Yo-Yo Dieting May Be Hard on the Heart A study of 158,063 postmenopausal women found that repeatedly losing and regaining weight raised the risk of sudden cardiac death more than threefold among the subjects who started at a “normal” weight (which usually means a body mass index between 18.5 and 24.9). Wild fluctuations in blood sugar, blood pressure, and other cardiovascular factors might explain the added strain on the circulatory system. No surprise on the takeaway: The Dietary Guidelines for Americans recommend that most women stick with 1,600 to 2,400 calories per day, depending on weight and activity level. Dangers of Drowsy Driving Drivers who are running on less than five hours of sleep are just as dangerous as drunk drivers, statistically speaking, according to a study by the American…

Grip. According to a 25-year study of more than 6,000 men age 45 through 68, grip strength was the best predictor of how well they’d avoid being incapacitated later in life. The weakest-gripping men suffered twice the disabilities those with hands of steel did. In a separate study of nearly 140,000 men and women, poor grip strength correlated with a higher incidence of death, especially from cardiovascular disease. Surf. In a small study of people age 55 to 76, those who carried out a series of Web searches showed increased activity in regions of the brain that control reading, language, memory, and visual ability. Regular Web surfers showed a significant boost in the areas that deal with decision making and complex reasoning. Breakfast. Harvard University scientists tracked more than 367,000…

SAVE, SAVE, SAV This i salways a good rule of tumb, kids or no kiss. Make sire you re alwyas pussing save ever few mints. Theer’s nothing wores than find that youve loist all off your wirk! REEMOVE TOYS FRIM TH KEYBORD Espcilly trains becasue they willllll rolll themmmm overrrrrrrrrr the keeboard, STIC TO YOU SCHEDILE EvEn a smell amount of toime devoted toooooo wrking is beetter thans nit workin atall. You wold be serpised how much wrok yuo cane got dine with just a few minutes devotee to work. Remember, you cant do this! USE POSITIVE REONFORCEMT Have a treat readdyfro yourrr chlid, and you’llll find that their’re mihgt bee more opene to larning thre best ways to beehivewehn your’re workong. May be a fruit scrollup or some MM&’s…

WHEN I WAS YOUNG, I BELIEVED ... ... nuns did not have feet and floated when they went around because they were so sacred and heavenly. But then I went to a Catholic high school during the 1980s, when miniskirts became a fad, and nuns’ habits became shorter. Even then, I still stared at their feet and expected them to glide around. ABEGAIL MASLOG, Mindanao, Philippines ... babies did the backstroke in the mothers’ stomachs. I suspect my mom tried to explain amniotic fluid, and I pictured it like a tiny swimming pool. KITTY HARRISON, South Port land, Maine … if I rubbed my fingers endlessly on my daddy’s steering wheel, I could get rid of my fingerprints. This was important, as I was planning to grow up to be…

Moms are just cops who love you. @SENDERBLOCK23 Things a mother should know: how to comfort a son without exactly saying Daddy was wrong. KATHARINE WHITEHORN Did you know, when kids go to bed, you can hear yourself think again? I sound fabulous. @PAIGEKELLERMAN My four-year-old just shut the bathroom door on me while I was inside and told me I was in jail. So I locked the door. I love this game. @KATEWHINEHALL (KATE HALL) My husband brought the kids to a baseball game, so I woke them up at 2 a.m. to feed them candy. No way I’m losing the “favorite parent” battle. @CARBOSLY The three-year-old insisted on helping me put all the laundry away. It’s taken us only six hours and ten minutes, and apparently pants go…

585: The price in dollars for a pair of Distressed Superstar Sneakers— brandnew leather and suede sneakers that are sold preripped, scuffed, and in disrepair. Bonus: The laces come knotted up, and the soles are held in place with duct tape. Source: footwearnews.com 785: The number of years between the 1232 canonization of Saint Anthony of Padua and the day a greatgrandmother in Brazil learned that the Anthony statue she had been praying to was, in fact, an action figure version of Elrond, a halfelven character from The Lord of the Rings. Source: buzzfeed.com 110.6: The new unofficial world record, in decibels, for the loudest burp. To put Australian Neville Sharp’s feat in perspective, a roaring chain saw averages 105 decibels. A proudly gassy Sharp said, “The phone hasn’t stopped…

1. sawbones—[A] doctor. Captain Kirk pulled strings to get his friend McCoy hired as the ship’s sawbones. (Used in The Pickwick Papers) 2. catawampus—[A] fierce. The catawampus storm engulfed the tiny village. (Martin Chuzzlewit) 3. jog-trotty—[A] monotonous. Will Lauren ever quit that jog-trotty data-entry job? (Bleak House) 4. spoony—[C] lovey-dovey. Those spoony newlyweds just won’t stop canoodling! (David Copperfield) 5. rantipole—[C] ill-behaved person. A gang of rantipoles vandalized the historic building. (Great Expectations) 6. gum-tickler—[B] strong drink. Ty downed a few gum-ticklers to forget his troubles. (Our Mutual Friend) 7. stomachic— [B] tummy medicine. This new organic stomachic may be just the thing for your indigestion. (David Copperfield) 8. sassigassity— [B] cheeky attitude. No more of your sassigassity, young lady! (“A Christmas Tree”) 9. comfoozled—[C] exhausted. We were all completely…

HURRY UP. YOU’RE DYING. MEGYN KELLY, news anchor If everything happens according to plan, it’s a business plan, not an adventure. BERTRAND PICCARD, the f irs t p i lot t o c ircl e the ear th in a solar-powered plane God never slams a door in your face without opening a box of Girl Scout cookies. ELIZABETH GILBERT, wr i ter The more you complain about your problems, the more problems you will have to complain about. ZIG ZIGLAR, author and mot ivat ional speaker BEING A PARENT DILUTES YOUR NARCISSISM. ETHAN HAWKE, actor ’m in the middle of my life, and I just don’t have enough years left to spend a large proportion of them inside an iPhone. ZADIE SMITH, author TALK TO A MAN ABOUT HIMSELF…

“I Survived!” I anxiously held my breath as I read these accounts. It’s nothing short of miraculous that these people lived to tell their stories. I’m so relieved they did and so grateful to have their experience and advice in hand should I ever have to face such horrific emergencies. JESSICA ROSS, Parker, Colorado After reading [about] the grizzly bear attack, I just had to make a comment. When you have to holler “Hey, bear” every 30 seconds because there are so many bears in the area, it could be a sign that maybe you should pick a safer place to hike. GLENDA CHIARA, Cort land, New York Dear Readers I’ve always found RD to provide equality in its articles. However, in writing about how a population will react to…

THE IDEA FOR OUR FIRST Nicest Place in America Contest was simple: At a time when half the country seems to be unhappy with the other half, why not honor the best of who we are? We all know places where neighbors help one another in good times and bad and where strangers always feel welcome. We thought, Let’s go on a hunt for epicenters of community spirit—and celebrate them. To get started, we asked our exclusive Inner Circle* of loyal RD readers for inspiration. Not surprisingly, many folks touted the virtues of small-town life. But we also got shout-outs to cities, such as San Diego, and specific communities, such as the campus of Virginia Tech. To which we say: Great! As we open the contest, we welcome submissions of…

RICK BRAGG is a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and author. WE HAD THREATENED to do it for years. We would pack a car with cold chicken and flip-flops and drive south like we used to, till the Alabama foothills faded into souvenir shops, shrimp shacks, and that first ragged palm. They had taken me there, when men still whistled at them and WALLACE stickers papered the bumpers of cars. How could I not take them now? But we never got out of the driveway, somehow. My aunt Edna’s heart was failing. Aunt Juanita had to care for my homebound uncle, and my mother, Margaret, did not leave home unless blown from it by tornadoes or TNT. So I was stunned a few years ago when my 72-year-old mother told me to…

IN EMERGENCY, BREAK GLASS Somehow, while I was washing dishes, my hand got wedged in a long, narrow glass. I added more detergent. Nothing. I added oil. Still stuck. Finally, I called the fire department’s nonemergency hotline for tips to free my hand. “We’ll probably have to cut the glass,” the fireman explained. I lived in a small town where excitement was rare. Soon 27 bored volunteer first responders descended upon my tiny apartment. They pulled straws over who would get to use their new cutting device. At last, I was free—and also likely the talk of the town. KATHLEEN GEMMELL, New Mi l ford, Connecticut DOUBLE DUTY My twin brother and I worked as orderlies on the same hospital floor. I prepared patients for surgery in one wing, and…

PET OWNERS may wish they could cuddle with their furry companions all day, but someone’s got to work to bring home the kibble. These tips should help keep your four-legged charges happy while they’re alone, which will make coming home to them all the sweeter. Sweat So They Slumber Most cats and some dogs are happy to sleep all day, but puppies and some energetic breeds (such as border collies and huskies) were born to run. Help your pooch burn off nervous energy with a 30- to 60-minute walk before you leave. Chat Them Up While you’re at work, you can supervise your furry friend via an indoor security camera. You can also video chat over Skype (seriously!) by setting up an account for your pet, enabling the auto-answer feature,…

YOU MIGHT CALL THEM SUPERHEROES of the over-60 set. A superager is someone between the ages of 60 and 80 who has the memory of someone 20 to 30 years younger. Even more remarkable, superagers aren’t as rare as you might think. In a recent Harvard Medical School study, nearly half of the older adults tested performed as well as or better than 18- to 32-year-olds. The key is to keep brain tissue in parts of the cortex from thinning. After all, the brain is a muscle too. The question, then, is how to find the right mental workout. The answer: It isn’t easy. In fact, the authors of the Harvard study say that forcing yourself to push through unpleasant and difficult situations is exactly what it takes to pump…

“No Use Crying Over Spilled Milk” THE FLAW: Crying helps people recover from disappointment. True, it’s dangerous to dwell on the past, but holding back those spilledmilk tears could hurt even more. A survey of more than 5,000 weepers in the Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology suggests that a good cry can provide resolution after pain— respondents who tried to suppress their sobs only felt worse. Or, to put it in more lactose-tolerant terms, “Sometimes we should cry over spilled milk,” writes Aaron Ben-Ze’ev, a philosophy professor at the University of Haifa in Israel. “Otherwise, how will we learn to value milk, and how will we avoid spilling it again?” “Pure As the Driven Snow” THE FLAW: Driven snow is toxic. “Driven” snow has been blown into drifts and…

REMEMBER THE TV show Green AcresThis story is a little like that, only with more animals and an even better ending. “My wife of 24 years, AnnMarie Roberts, was raised in New York City, worked in the fashion industry, and never got her hands dirty,” wrote Keith Roberts in the magazine Country Woman. “Then, nine years ago, I wanted to move home to Florida and reconnect to my country roots, but how would I inspire the same feeling in, well, a city woman? I brought her a two-month-old potbellied pig.” AnnMarie, then 46, was smitten. Soon she took in another potbellied pig that had been abandoned. And thus began Sugarloaf Mountain Ranch, her animal sanctuary in central Florida. With the couple’s two children grown up, these creatures would now be…

MARC PEYSER is the executive editor of Reader’s Digest and coauthor of the book Hissing Cousins. WHEN I TELL MY CHILDREN a story about my mother, like how she used to share her cocktails with our golden retriever, or the time she tried to eat an entire pumpkin pie off the floor after I dropped it, or when I woke up in the middle of the night and caught her making a tooth fairy delivery in the nude, the kids always ask the same thing: Which mother are you talking about, Pop? It’s a fair question. After all, I’ve had five mothers. Only one of them is my biological mother, of course. (She’s the tooth fairy mom, and just for the record, she says she wasn’t wearing any clothes because…

IN DECEMBER 2011, Dillion Price’s mother found him crying in his bedroom. For three months, students in his class at Southern Alamance High School in North Carolina had been posting nasty comments and pictures of him on Facebook. His mom took the posts, some describing Price performing sexual acts in very crude language, to the county sheriff ’s office. Soon after, a county detective, David Sykes, began to investigate. He created a fake Facebook profile to keep tabs on Price’s account and monitored it for two months. When he came across posts he considered to be cyberbullying, he took screenshots of them and added the users’ names to a list, which he took with him to the high school on the morning of February 7, 2012. It was on that…

Limit the Updates Apps are very thoughtful: They are constantly refreshing themselves to give you the most recent information available. But all that updating uses data, so if you don’t need up-tothe- second weather reports or stock quotes, turn auto-refresh off for select apps. IOS: Go to Settings > General > Background App Refresh. ANDROID*: Go to Settings > Data Usage. Scroll down to the appropriate app and choose Restrict App Background Data. Always Search with Wi-Fi Your phone may automatically use your cellular data when the Wi-Fi signal is weak—a handy feature, but not necessarily one you want to use all the time. You can stop your phone from making that switch. IOS: To disable, go to Settings > Cellular. Then turn off Wi-Fi Assist. ANDROID*: Unlike on the…

A customer said she was looking for a book. She couldn’t remember the title, author, or plot. “But,” she said, “the cover is red.” Submitted by JULIA SCHORR, via Facebook I was at the information desk when a customer said, “Hi, you have a phone call for me?” “I beg your pardon?” I said. “Over the intercom—I heard it! You said, ‘Mike, you have a phone call on line one!’” “Sir, that’s our store manager’s name. We were letting him know he had a phone call.” The customer walked away very disappointed. Source: notalwaysright.com We received a letter from a woman who wanted us to know that she had placed her father’s ashes in various nooks and crannies throughout our poetry room. She said it was her father’s favorite place…

▪ We were in Chattanooga when the GPS told us to turn right on Milliliter King. The street was ML King. JESSICA MICHELLE BARNES, Bastrop, Louisiana ▪ I was driving to a hotel to give a presentation. The GPS directed me to exit the freeway and drive for miles on a road that went from paved to dirt. Eventually I came to a high fence topped with barbed wire and a gate with an armed guard. “I’m guessing that this is not a hotel,” I said to the guard. Shaking his head slowly, he said, “Not unless you’re a guest of the state.” RHONDA GILBERT, Detroit, Michigan ▪ I was driving down south in an unfamiliar area when my GPS told me to make a right turn. I was on…

There are countless ways to show support for veterans, starting with the easiest of all: opening your checkbook. These organizations would be delighted with any contribution, but they specialize in helping donors provide more hands-on support. HIRE. Looking for a few good workers? Post an open position at uschamber foundation.org/hiring-our-heroes. In 2015, this U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation program matched 29,200 job seekers with 6,200 companies, which resulted in 3,600 job offers. MENTOR. The nonprofit American Corporate Partners matches professionals with vets who need advice on their résumés, interview prep, and career options. The ideal coach has eight-plus years of experience and can spend a few hours a month chatting on the phone. Apply at acp-usa.org. VOLUNTEER. Got a free hour? The Give an Hour volunteer network (giveanhour.org) can help…

1 The single most important component of a home security system is the alarm company’s sign in your front yard. In survey after survey, burglars say they avoid homes with alarms, so let thieves know your home is secured (even if it isn’t). 2 Another sign worth posting: BEWARE OF DOG. Burglars hate dogs, not only because they bite but also because they bark, attracting attention. True, Spot can’t call the cops, but he can persuade a crook to move on. 3 Professional systems can cost upward of $600 for installation alone, but they have perks. Many allow you to arm or disarm them from a key chain or phone. Some are also connected to smoke and carbon monoxide detectors. 4 If you do sign up with an alarm company,…

1. sawbones ('saw-bohnz) n.— A: doctor. B: magician. C: old nag. 2. catawampus (kat-uh-'wom-puhs) adj.—A: fierce. B: syrupy. C: deep and dark. 3. jog-trotty ('jahg-trah-tee) adj.— A: monotonous. B: nervous. C: backward. 4. spoony ('spoo-nee) adj.— A: spacious. B: pun-filled. C: lovey-dovey. 5. rantipole ('ran-tih-pohl) n.— A: battering ram. B: fishing rod. C: ill-behaved person. 6. gum-tickler ('guhm-tihk-ler) n.— A: funny remark. B: strong drink. C: wishbone. 7. stomachic (stuh-'ma-kihk) n.— A: winter coat. B: tummy medicine. C: windup toy. 8. sassigassity (sass-ih-'gass-ih-tee) n.—A: fancy clothes. B: cheeky attitude. C: gust of hot wind. 9. comfoozled (kuhm-'foo-zuhld) adj.—A: on fire. B: pampered. C: exhausted. 10. mud lark ('muhd lark) n.— A: scavenging child. B: court judge. C: ancient scribe. 11. plenipotentiary (pleh-nuh-puh- 'tehn-shuh-ree) n.—A: housewife. B: diplomatic agent. C: bank…