SSA Ep. #45: What Was This Blog Supposed to be About?

The way I see it, there are two ways my life could go.  Either I will develop skin cancer and die while still relatively young, or I'll beat that skin cancer (I'm pretty sure the skin cancer will develop eventually--it is my destiny) and live to be really, really old.  And if I live to be really, really old, I'll have Alzheimer's Syndrome.  I'm pretty sure the Alzheimer's is unavoidable, too, simply because my 31 year old brain is already having serious trouble making and keeping connections.  I do crossword puzzles and Sudoku and other things to try to sharpen my brain power, but it's kind of a lost cause.  I think I've already started a very very gradual decline towards completely losing my memory.

For instance, I have thought of dozens and dozens of wonderful socially awkward topics about which to blog, but alas, thirty seconds after I've dreamt them up, I forget them.  I might remember some of these topics on some random day during some random encounter, but some of them are probably forgotten forever.  Just last night, I had some brilliant topic that I was going to blog on today, but...I forgot it.

That kind of thing happens a lot.  I walk into a room and can't remember why.  I stand up to go do something, only to sit down a second later because I can't remember what I was about to do.  I learned a long time ago that if I think up a good line for a poem, I'd better write it down immediately or it'll get lost somewhere in the fluffy synapses of my brain. 

Sometimes I think my head is like Winnie the Pooh's...stuffed with fluff.  I guess that beats one of the alternatives.  Poor Eeyore--stuffed with sawdust.  Yeah, I see you judging the gloomy little guy.  You'd be gloomy too if you were stuffed with sawdust.  And if your tail kept falling off.  So there. 

Yeah, but anyway, I was kind of just writing this in hopes that I would remember what I was originally going to blog about today, but I don't think that's going to happen.  Maybe it will come to me sometime tomorrow while I'm at work, trying to remember what some kid just asked me to do for them.  Maybe it's lost forever.  Maybe someday when I'm in a nursing home drooling in my jello (which I won't remember that I don't like), I'll remember it.  I might not remember my own name, but I'll remember what I was going to blog about today.

All I know is that it was brilliant.  It was a brilliant topic.  Perhaps it was so brilliant that it would change the world and life as we know it.  Perhaps that's why my brain forgot it.  It was a fail safe.  My poor memory is the one defense the world has from knowing my insane genius!  ...so all the world ends up seeing is the insane part.  Thanks, brain.  Thanks a lot.

And please no one take this the wrong way, because I know this is horrible.  I'm not making fun of anyone besides myself.  My great grandmother had Alzheimer's and it's a horrible, horrible thing.  I've been blessed to not have any other close family members to have had it, so far (and I'm hoping never).  But one day I was talking to my roommate about Alzheimer's, and I was saying how I hoped no one in my family ever got it.  And then I said something that made me laugh hysterically, because it was funny in a pathetic way--which pretty much describes most of my life.  I said, "If anyone in my family has to get Alzheimer's, I hope it's me.  I don't have any kids who will worry about me, and if I'm going to be sad and alone someday, it might be kind of nice to not know what was going on."

Yeah.

SAA Ep. #41: Not Remembering Having Met People

I took the girls I watch to the pool today.  Since I had cleverly packed a bag full of my swimming stuff and cleverly forgotten it and left it on my bed in my apartment, I was not able to go swimming with them.  So I sat nicely shaded at one of those awesome tables with a huge umbrella and still somehow managed to get a sunburn.

I'd been there about twenty minutes when one of the moms from the neighborhood came up and started talking to me as if she'd known me my entire life.  "I saw you over here and wanted to come see how you were doing."

Now, usually I'm terrible with names, but good with faces.  I've gone to the same church for five and a half years.  I've sung in the choir for about four of those years.  There are still names of people in the choir that I just don't know.  There are many more people in the church whose names I just don't know.  But I know their faces.  If I've met someone even once, I usually at least remember the person's face.  This person?  Well, I had no idea who she was.  I mean, she WAS wearing sunglasses, so I guess that might have thrown me a little.  As she started talking, I just figured that she was someone I'd met once or twice and maybe shared a "gee aren't these kids so cute" moment.

But then this lady asked me a question that led me to believe that we've had more than just a superficial conversation.  As I was trying to figure out who she was, she asked me, "So how is your book going?"

I looked down at my hands, at the book that I was reading, wondering if she were possibly talking about that.  But no.  She had that annoying look that accompanies every person who asks that dreaded question, "How is your book going?"

I kind of made one of those "so-so" hand gestures and managed a weak smile.  She said something else before departing.  I can't remember what it was.  I was too busy trying to figure out when I'd had a conversation with her about the fact that I write books.  I mean, I just don't go up to strangers and say, "Hi!  My name is Ruth!  I write books!  I like Dragons!  My second favorite color is maroon!  I'm obsessed with Rich Mullins!  My sister once got bitten by a muskrat!  Be my best friend EVER!"  Maybe if I did, I'd have more friends, but somehow I doubt it.  There is a reason someone like me was born inside a shell.  The figurative kind--not the candy coated kind.  I think being an M&M would be slightly problematic for me.  I am reminded of Spaceballs when "Pizza the Hutt" ate himself to death.  If I were an M&M, my fate would be similar.

AND...back to my story.

The only thing I can figure is that either I was completely out of it when I did meet and speak with this person, or I really have only had surface level conversations with her and other people have been talking to her about me behind my back.  I don't really like to think about people talking about me because 1) my writing and I aren't cool enough to be the subject of almost total strangers' conversations and 2) that kind of thinking makes me seem paranoid--and I'm finally just now starting to get used to the idea that "THEY" probably aren't all out to get me.

But then there was this one time in college where I walked into the office of my new advisor, an English professor.  I never had the privilege of taking this lady's class, and I'd never spoken to her before.  But I sat down at her desk and the first words out of her mouth were, "So I hear you're a wonderful writer."  Apparently the English department HAD been talking about me.  And "THEY" might have even been out to get me. 

So I'm really not sure what happened, but apparently I meet people and then forget about it later.  Maybe I have amnesia.  Maybe "THEY" came and got me and erased my memory of having met this person.  How many other people have "THEY" made me forget?  What other things have "THEY" done to me?

I'mma go hide in my room now...

...and put tin foil on my head...

...just for good measure...