120-year-old woman credits her longevity to forgetting how to count

ELKINS, W.Va. – When Eleanor Perkins wished for a long and fruitful life when she blew out the candles on her cake at her 12th birthday party, she never expected she’d one day become the oldest living person in America.

However, this past weekend she did just that when she celebrated her 120th trip around the sun during a cozy family dinner at the local Olive Garden.

“It was really nice to have all the kids, my husband, and my siblings together to celebrate this incredible milestone,” said Perkins. “I don’t think I would’ve made it this long without all of them by my side.”

Perkins also said she reached out to the Guinness Book of World Records to verify her as the current oldest living person, but the famous tome of worldly achievements said she didn’t meet the requirements to break the current record held by Jeanne Louise Calment, who lived from 1875 – 1997 (122 years, 164 days).

“You don’t need to look at her birth certificate to know that woman isn’t 120 years old,” said Cameron Ferdinand-Oscar-Michaelson-Smith-Meyer, a spokesman for the Guiness Book of World Records and a record holder himself for most hyphenated last names. “Of course, we did look at her birth certificate in the event she had some Paul Rudd genes in her, but as it turns out, she was born in 1979.”

Upon further investigation, Perkins’ story continued to unravel when we learned her children, Gary and Bernadette, are in only in high school and her husband is two years older than her.

“No, she’s not 120 years old,” said Micah Perkins, Eleanor’s husband. “I admit the passage of time has felt a little weird ever since the COVID-19 pandemic. Days and weeks feel both tediously long as well as gone in an instant, and we’ve often joked we feel a hundred years old thanks to feeling exhausted from trying to balance work, the kids’ activities, and a family life. I think the real issue is that she may have just forgotten to count.”

Mr. Perkins admits it’s a bit of a strange explanation but explains that ever since he and his wife developed COVID-19 symptoms in the fall of 2020, he’s noticed a slight but steady decline in her cognitive abilities.

“Our minds were really fuzzy all the time,” he said. “After a few weeks, I felt back to my normal self, but Eleanor continues to struggle with the long-term effects of the virus.”

According to the Mayo Clinic, one side effect of the COVID-19 virus is “neurological symptoms or mental health conditions, including difficulty thinking or concentrating, headache, sleep problems, dizziness when you stand, pins-and-needles feeling, loss of smell or taste, and depression or anxiety.”

Eleanor admits she has continued to have many lingering effects since she contracted the virus but didn’t realize how bad her ability to count had degraded until she was asked by her husband, during this interview, to count to ten.

“One, two, tree, five, eight, eleven, ten, it’s not that hard,” said Eleanor.

Although the room filled with giggles when she answered, because we thought she had miscounted on purpose, it quickly silenced when we understood she had answered earnestly.

“I didn’t actually forget how to count,” said Eleanor. “But when I fell sick with COVID, I noticed my family actually started to help out around the house. My kids cleaned their rooms, my husband helped with the cooking, and they collectively worked together to help make sure our house felt like a home. For the first time in a very long time, I felt like I didn’t have to do it all.”

Eleanor admits she’s felt 100% better a few weeks after her initial COVID symptoms appeared and didn’t expect to maintain this façade for as long as she did, but is afraid she’s too far deep into this farce to pull out now.

“I think I became complacent,” she said. “I got so used to the lack of responsibility that I became too comfortable in this new lifestyle. It’s been four years now, I don’t think I can stop living this lie. What will everyone think of me?”

Eleanor is currently enlisting the help of professional conmen to brainstorm ideas on how she can successfully navigate her way out of this situation while maintaining her reputation with friends and family. The current best course of action they’ve developed is to fabricate an elaborate laboratory explosion that would “irradiate her with a nearly deadly dose of radiation but would miraculously restore her memory.”

Stay tuned as we continue to follow this story.

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