New Years Resolution

The best thing for me, given the number of MS holes in my brain, would be to somehow plan on making mistakes in whatever I do before they are actually made. I don’t know if this is actually possible. It would take a level of concentration and vigilance not easily attained because of those same brain holes, not to mention a certain sort of surrender to disability.

Nonetheless, if I cannot soon find a way to negotiate my own stupidity, it’s going to end up causing some kind of serious trouble eventually.

It’s just little things. Like misplacing the movies I had rented this morning. It was clear they had not gotten home with me, but that was all that was clear. Their whereabouts were otherwise a perfect mystery.

The first necessity in trying to unravel the mystery of the missing videos was to determine in my mind just exactly where I had been in the last couple hours. This is not an easy task when the better part of recollection has disappeared in black holes. I sat at the dining room table and went over and over the question of my own activities. I employed the aid of certain clues, such as the papers and sales receipts in my pockets. I asked my son if I had mentioned anything regarding my plans.

It appeared, after investigation, that I had gone to the movie store (well, of course I had—I must have, right?), I had gone to Starbucks (fresh foam in the bottom of the cup on the kitchen counter), I had gone to the bank—actually two banks (the papers in my pocket), and I had gone to the pharmacy.

But in what order. At what point in this unknown chronology had I rented to movies, at what point had I ended up without them?

The only thing to do was to embark upon further investigation—to visit the actual scenes in question, to follow my own tracks, no matter how hard my brain was trying to cover them. In short, I would put a tail on myself.

Was it Colonel Mustard in the study, or Mrs. Peacock in the ballroom?

Well, I found the movies—or rather, a bank teller found them and returned them to the video store. But they might just as easily have been picked up by a stranger and kept, without charge. Free movies for him, as I would have been paying to own what I was unable to find.

You see what I mean?

At that bank earlier that morning (where the movies had ultimately been found), I had made a fairly simple transaction—simple, that is, for anyone with a functioning brain. I was to withdraw $670 from my son’s custodial account, put $300 for his rent in my checking account, and take the rest in cash to deliver to him. I have done it hundreds of times.

And yet, when the teller asked me how I would like the money, and found myself completely paralyzed by what she could mean by this.

How do I want it? Well, I guess you can just hand it across the counter?

No, in what denominations. She wanted to know if I wanted it in 20s, or 100s, or some combination of the two.

I guess unless you’ve been there, it is simply impossible to convey the nature of the inescapable rut ones mind can fall into. Or maybe it’s like getting your car stuck in a snow bank. . You can’t go forward, you can’t go backward. You just spin your wheels.

How do I want it? How do I want it? My goodness, what an interesting question. Hmm, let me think here. . . . Oh, I know—why don’t you just decide for me!

So here is a New Years resolution. I will from here forward plan on not knowing what I’m doing, and shall refuse to be fooled by old notions of being a normal person. I resolve to keep a close eye on myself.