Missing in Action

My brain is missing in action. With each passing year I grow increasingly forgetful and fear this is the beginning of the end. Gray matter, once solid, has turned to mush. I suspect it’s pouring out my ears as I sleep. It’s caught up in the wash with the sheets and pillow cases, spun about and sent forever down the drain. Where else could it have gone? Because clearly portions of my intellect have vanished.

It’s those moments when I pick up the phone to call home and forget my own number. It’s the days when I write the word “world” and then stare at it incessantly wondering if it is spelled correctly. It’s the two weeks in a row I forget ballet lessons; weekly lessons we’ve been attending for six months. It’s the absolute blank when I’m trying to recall names of people I know, people who are familiar.

I can feel it; the little man in my head sprinting down neuronal pathways. He’s panicking, opening doors one by one, looking for information. But he’s lost the address. He can’t find the vault. Each successive door reveals a blank white board. Someone got there first and erased all notation. Naked in public, laughed at by others, he frenetically continues his quest. In the meantime I stand with my face as blank as the boards behind the doors; jumping occasionally as egresses are slammed shut.

Perhaps the inn is full; there’s no room for additional information. As such cerebral sanitation crews labor late into the night to gather veteran knowledge and dump it out any available orifice. This would certainly explain the knowledge gaps; the lack of recall.

My memory failure is typically chocked up to hormones and parenthood and a lack of sleep. Though, like garbage floating on the ocean, pernicious thoughts also float through my head. When skies are grey thoughts of Alzheimer’s, malignant tumors and virulent prions come crashing to shore; reminders of human mortality and the morbidity that precedes it.

Then there are brighter days when I remember Albert Einstein. He was notoriously absent-minded. He couldn’t tabulate bus fare and misplaced large checks. He couldn’t even remember his own address. And yet he was a genius. It’s then I realize my problem is quite clear. I am simply too intelligent. Yeah, right.