Stookie-less redux

The view as I arrived home after spending my Saturday at a conference on Bilingual Learners. A really interesting and motivating morning, let down by a rather pointless and misjudged presentation (from a Bilingual Education point of view) about the Commonwealth Games.
Research on the benefits of bilingualism / multilingualism to cognitive development is very well documented. However there was some quite exciting news about the "bilingual brain" and how it delays for Dementia for 3-5 years than that of a monolingual one. The implications of this for health and savings was significant and it was hoped that this might be a good convincing factor to put some cash into the switch away from the monolingual classroom that exists in Scotland (and the UK) at present.
A bizarre little moment occurred in the Q&A afterwards where a practitioner asked if the more languages that were spoken meant a longer postponement of Dementia. It didn't, according to the speaker, as the physiological make-up of the bilingual brain is the same as a multilingual one. The questioner then said..
"I was only asking because I have signs of early onset Alzheimers.."
to which a loud ripple of laughter went round the lecture theatre. Maybe it was just a nervous laugh because such a sensitive and personal thing was being spoken about in a lecture setting, but it seemed one of the most inappropriate laughs I've ever heard !

*

I did sleep better last night and was contemplating, on my way home, how great it is to be stookie-less. I then heard a wee echo of a talk given by Thich Nhat Hahn where he talked about suffering from toothache through the night.
When he finally got to a dentist the following morning and got his tooth out he thought "how great a feeling it is not to have toothache". Then a great realisation: almost his whole life has been without toothache. Why did it take toothache to make him appreciate how fine an existence is a toothache-less one?
So, apart from the last 4 weeks, I've been stookie-less. How fine it is to be stookie-less. All the conditions for contentment are right here in my stookie free limbs. And breathe.

Onwards.