Tag Archives: memory

He, she, whaa?

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Having a short fuse can be handy. If you’re going to lose your temper, it helps to do it as near as possible to whatever it is that gets you angry in the first place. It makes it easier to solve things that way.

I mean, really, what good does it do for me to sit here stewing over a list of perceived minor infractions allegedly committed by CF until a long fuse finally burns down and I erupt over something absurd? Might as well erupt over something reasonable when it happens.

For instance, pronouns.

Me no get the pro of noun. Put too many in a story and lost is me. Or I. Woe me. Whoa.

CF is a pretty good storyteller. She knows how to introduce her cast of characters, set the scene, get the flow going. We’ve been swapping tales for years, work stories, childhood stories, you-won’t-believe-this stories, you’ve-told-me-that-four-times-before stories, no-wait-let-me-finish stories, and so forth.

We are such compulsive story tellers that we even have a rule to stop ourselves when the other needs a break: The Three Time Rule. Just hold up three fingers to invoke it, and the other person must stop. We inaugurated it to stop ourselves from reading all the good stuff in the newspaper to each other, but now we use it whenever one of us starts to get carried away on anything the other wants to savor herself.

So. Pronouns.

When CF comes home from work, I usually stop what I am doing (which this week is frantically writing obituaries for my college magazine) and we decompress for a few minutes in the comfy chairs, and she gives me a rundown of her day.

Her particular field of work happens to employ mostly women, and everyone in her department happens to be female, except for the head of the department. Therefore, almost all of her pronouns are female. This has been true for many years. It has never presented a problem to me when she recounts stories.

Last night, however, the fuse blew.

“Pronouns!” I shouted at her. She was a bit startled, I think. I was more than a bit confused.

There weren’t that many people in her story, but I had no idea who was who or who was where or what was going on when or why. Somebody was something somewhere was all I knew. I needed a proper noun and I needed it now. Either that or I needed little dolls to act it all out.

Screaming “Pronouns!” at someone isn’t much help, I know, because it implies that you want more pronouns, when the opposite is actually the case, but it was all my brain could muster at that point, since it was all my brain could focus on. The pronouns were dripping off every inch of gray matter left inside my skull (and believe me, I don’t think there’s much there), clogging up any hope I had of making sense of anything.

How old are children when they figure out pronouns? “Bobby want milk!” “Bobby, can you say, ‘I want milk’?” “Mommy want milk?” “No, Bobby, you want milk.” “Bobby want milk!”

Clearly I am not going to get the people around me to salt their conversation with proper nouns rather than pronouns. I’ll just have to get good at guessing what’s going on, or asking CF later, or interrupting by saying, “You mean Gertrude?” or whatever is appropriate.

I suppose there is some sort of parallel between pronouns and computer programming, in that pronouns are indirect references and programming involves indirect references. So perhaps it makes sense that pronouns are another area of my brain that fell into the black hole of brain damage.

Speaking of black holes, I dared to approach the programming black hole the other day. Those obituaries I’m writing came with a CD full of short profiles from the college, 125 of them, but they weren’t ordered in a way that made sense to me. I wanted them ordered in chronological order by year of graduation, since that’s the order they will appear in the magazine. Instead, they were ordered on the CD by first name, with the class year tacked on the end.

Not to bore you to tears, but this is what typical entries looked like:

Grover Cleveland ‘48
Thomas Jefferson ‘36
Zachary Taylor ‘52

And this is what I wanted them to look like:

36 Thomas Jefferson
48 Grover Cleveland
52 Zachary Taylor

Any decent programmer would be able to whip up a few lines of code to take care of that in a few minutes. Since I am no longer a decent programmer, I stared at the directory listing for, oh, 10 minutes or so, muttering dark and unprintable things.

I no longer have any of my whiz-bang programming tools on my computer, which is just as well, since I could probably cause grave danger if I did. But I do have Microsoft Word, which has a programming language in it, something that most of its users try to avoid, because it is incredibly poorly documented and stupidly put together. It has annoyed me from the first day I was forced to use it for something because you have to practically offer burnt offerings to Redmond, home of Microsoft, just to get it to select a block of text.

Word’s programming language is this uneasy amalgam of super-duper power-mongering world-conquering giant programming concepts and diddly-squat rinky-dink move-the-cursor-one-letter-to-the-right word processing commands. Definitely schizophrenic. Programming it goes like this:

CHANGE THE WORLD now scratch your nose.

What possessed me to think that I could manipulate the names of these little files in Word’s programming language is beyond me, but before I knew it, there I was, indirectly referencing Grover Cleveland like he’s never been indirectly referenced before. In fact, I indirectly referenced him so indirectly that it is clear he will not be back in time to serve his second term.

This in fact explains why he is the only president to serve two non-consecutive terms as president. He was caught in a bad programming loop.

Fortunately, I had the good sense to give up the task before ruining the entire chain of presidents. I found a perfectly serviceable third party utility that did the job of renaming for me in just a few seconds. It handles all kinds of nifty things you might need to do with file names.

I’m considering writing to them to see if they can add a pronoun option.

 

 

 

 

Pow! Right in the Kisser!

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Sometimes finding an idea for this blog takes a while. Sometimes it comes up and smacks me in the head.

This one smacked me in the head.

Nevertheless, I hesitated to write about it, because I don’t want you to think I want you to feel sorry for me. “Oh, poor Chris, so brain-damaged.” Ick.

I decided to write about it because it gives me an opportunity to show you how ridiculous brain damage can be. What a waste of time it can be. How it can sneak into the most treasured parts of your life and trip you up. How it can do the same to the most trivial parts of your life. How nothing is safe, and everything is up for grabs.

Tuesday was our 30th anniversary, CF and me. We had talked quite a bit about how we wanted to celebrate, and finally decided on a quiet dinner later in the summer when our son is away visiting relatives. We were married in Canada on our 25th anniversary and threw ourselves a party then, but otherwise we don’t tend to call much attention to the day, and we have never exchanged presents. It just isn’t our style.

But in all that talking about how we would celebrate, just the two of us, in all of the reminiscing that we did in the days leading up to the anniversary itself, I forgot to prepare for the one very small thing that we have always, always done: exchange cards.

And so on Tuesday morning, there on the table was a card for me, along with a dozen gorgeous irises. I took one look at them and burst into tears.

It’s as if my brain had called for a drum roll, and the snare drummer had been dutifully drumming a single paradiddle waiting for me to enter, when CYMBAL CRASH! I spot the cards and my memory of how we celebrate our anniversaries comes flooding back.

I have a drawer full of anniversary cards from CF, carefully saved over the years, little reminders of our (almost mostly) happy times, timecards of where we have been, postcards from the past. I can look through them whenever I want, reread the words CF felt were most important five or ten or twenty years ago whenever I want. How could I have forgotten that?

But brain damage goes where it wants. It finds an opening and slips right in to any crack, any fissure. It hides behind the electrical impulses our brain depends on to operate, and then pounces all at once. It destroys some parts so they never return; it interferes with others just enough to frustrate our lives.

With enough of a push, I got back my memory about exchanging cards on our anniversary. I indulged myself in a good, pity-me cry in the bedroom, got my car keys and went out to the store and found the perfect card. CF did not hold it against me. (In fact, she felt terrible for making me cry.) I have retrieved that memory, for many years to come, I hope.

But I don’t anticipate getting back my memory of how to program computers or do much math. That, I suspect, is gone for good. Those are procedural memories, much more complex, involving multiple components, multiple areas of abstract reasoning. Recalling real memories is much simpler.

The real memories are still there, sitting quietly in their little axons, waiting for us to find them via a new route, one that the brain damage hasn’t ripped apart.

I’m fortunate that I still have lots of axons left intact. I remember my first date with CF (we went to Grendel’s Den in Harvard Square for dinner; she had an omelet, I had a club sandwich). I remember our unprecedented string of terrible vacations (Ant Lodge, Spider Lodge, Arctic Blast Lodge, you get the idea).

I remember the birth of our son. I remember the frantic drive from Maine to Virginia, including a desperate stop in Nyack, N.Y., at the Toyota dealership for a ring of some sort to hold the exhaust system in place after we nearly lost it on the Tappan Zee Bridge. Because of this side trip, we missed NF’s birth by half an hour, but at least we arrived quietly. We still have that car, and it still has that ring. And we still have that son.

Speaking of which, NF’s birthday is next week. I’d better double-check with CF to make certain I haven’t forgotten anything about that celebration, but I think I’m all set. CF’s birthday is in September, and I am already planning ahead. Last year, I was still in the hospital on her birthday. Her sister Peggy was able to find the present I had for her hidden in my office, but I think really CF was just happy I was conscious enough to tell her where it was.

 

 

Fried Brain To Go

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“Can we stop at Panda Express?”

What a sweet, innocent voice. He dredges it up from the very bottom of his soul when he really wants something, something he is certain our tired bodies, exhausted by hours of work, or our tired wallets, exhausted by piles of bills, cannot handle.

It replaces his usual full-grown teenager I-know-everything why-are-you-so-stupid voice that every parent learns to love and interpret as evidence that their child is still alive and actively mocking them to all their friends.

We are headed home after yet another baseball game. CF is driving. She is more tired than usual, because her arm is still completely encased in bandages from her second surgery, making everything more difficult, not to mention painful, not to mention awkward, but she won’t let me drive, not to mention I can’t drive this car anyway, because it doesn’t have hand controls. She tells NF, our son, that we can’t stop at Panda Express because she is too tired to go in.

The injured paw

She’s the one who usually goes in to get food for him. She doesn’t like Chinese food, and I never get anything there, because they only have about eight selections, all with beef or chicken, neither of which I eat, so we only ever stop for something for NF, and he is either too shy or too lazy to go in by himself, I’m not sure which, but I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt.

And I feel sorry for him because he pulled a muscle and couldn’t play tonight, so CF and I engage in some secret hand gestures that resolve into me agreeing to run into Panda Express. This brings about a moment of tension in the car.

“Do you know what I want?” The sweet, innocent voice is gone. The slightly challenging, nearly bickering voice is back. It’s not a challenge to my knowledge of his culinary taste buds, but his snide acknowledgement that my mental capacity to remember anything as complicated as a take-out order from the car to the counter is a bit insulting these days.

“Should we write it down?” CF offers.

“No, no,” I insist, “I’ve got it, chow mein, with a double entrée of orange chicken. And a root beer.”

“Not the rice,” says NF. “The chow mein.”

“Yes,” I say, “the chow mein.”

“Two orange chicken,” he says.

“I know. Two orange chicken.” You’d think I was the child.

There’s a rather large party pandering the express, so I start to review the order in my mind. Chow mein, double orange chicken. Chowder mein, double chicken. Chowder chain, chowder chicken. Chicken chow chain double main trouble chicken.

No, wait. Oh, look, they have those rangoons tonight. Chow mein. Not rice. Chow mein. Ciao, Maine. A small town outside Bangor. That’s Bann-gore, not Bang-err, like they say in Washington. Washing-toon. Ran-goon. Chow moon.

O.K. Chow mein. Double truckle chuckle muckle tricking. No. Chuck mein. No. Chopped brain. No. Chow chain with double chicken orange brain. Close!

The pandering party is partly past posting its porder. The non-Asian server catches my eye and gives me one of those non-sympathetic sympathetic server “I’m sorry for the delay” looks that tells me she is late for her break and really has to go to the bathroom and plans to sprint away as soon as the pandering party lets her. Time for me to re-review the order I have completely forgotten and wish I had written down. I would go back to the car to ask, but the line behind me has snaked out the door like a Chinese New Year parade.

Crow train? Root blain?

Root beer! With a burst of triumph I remember the root beer, about which I had completely forgotten.

Chow mein. And root beer. Good.

A wave of my former self washes over me. I remember my own advice: when in doubt, read the documentation. What brilliance I once possessed! How often did I grouse about people who had all the information they needed to use their own equipment, their own software, at their own fingertips, but had to make phone calls, to call technical services in some far off land, hang on hold forever, just to be told to press this key or type this sequence. It drove me nuts.

And so I read the documentation. Panda Express very nicely posts step-by-step ordering instructions overhead in its restaurants: Step 1: choose your plate. Step 2: choose your entrée. Aha! Step 1: chow mein! Step 2: chick…chick…chick…all this chicken…chick…orange chicken—that’s it—two servings of it, I’m sure! And look! It’s my turn! And yes, there she goes! Off to her break!

Another server, soon to become my best friend, slips into her place, and I confidently rattle off, “Chow mein—”

“Is that for here or to go?”

I stare at her, dumbfounded, lost, mind completely blank, Timmy without Lassie, Dorothy without Toto.

“To go,” I finally croak in my post-stroke gargle of a voice.

She scoops a massive blob of brownish noodles into a Styrofoam container and smiles at me expectantly.

“And the entrée?”

Lassie come home, I think. What was that chicken again? I cast my eyes down the steam table.

“Chicken—orange.” Again the strangled voice. “Two.”

She gives me a weird little smile as if she deals with fried brain people all day long.

“And a root beer.” She hands me a cup at the register.

Having now been inside this express restaurant for a non-express amount of time, I step over to the soda dispenser and fill the cup with root beer, which, since this is me we’re talking about, is not root beer. It is slightly fizzy slightly flavored water. It is approximately the same shade as the chow mein. I return to my new best friend and croak that there is something wrong with the root beer.

“Oh, yes, I knew that,” she says. And off she goes to fix it, belatedly. I prevent some potential root beer lovers from facing disappointment before she returns; I don’t know if it’s my croaky voice that scares them away, the putrid mess in my cup, or what I tell them that does it, but they are saved from failure.

Back in the car, I hand the bag and cup to my son.

“Chow mein, double orange chicken,” I croak triumphantly, smirking ever so slightly.

“Where’s the straw? Where’s the fork?” he snarls ever so lovingly.

That sound you hear? Me deflating.

Ciao!

Ciao!

One lopsided circle

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I remember walking into my grandmother’s house and suddenly there was a full meal on the table. I have a friend in Maine who somehow produces shortcakes by the dozens without moving a finger. My own partner, CF, can do a little spin and clean the kitchen in an instant.

I used to have one of these magical powers. I could install and understand software in 10 seconds. People flocked from miles around to have me burp their electronic marvels back to harmonious buzzing. My nephew wrote his college application essay about how I introduced him to computers, and now he’s finishing his degree in computer science. I glanced at new hardware and understood it. I was a full-fledged nerd.

But then came Aug. 28, 2011. That’s the day that lightning metaphorically struck me, scarring my brain exactly at the spot that gave me my wondrous power over computers.

It’s been over five months now, and I went through a grueling test of my lack of power today. I needed to put some antivirus software on an old computer for my son, so he could use it for his online school (he’s going solo this year). Now, this normally would have been a snooze of a job. Click a few keys, go get a cuppa. Instead, it turned into two hours of now I understand why people hate computers.

As I said, it’s an old computer. I cranked up Internet Explorer and went to the Comcast website, where, as a subscriber, I can get antivirus software for free. Oops, Comcast tells me, I have to have IE 7 or later, and this old buzzard has IE 6, which, fortunately, has a Windows Update button. Otherwise, I’d be lost.

Windows Update is an automatic tool that comes with Windows that’s supposed to run at certain intervals to figure out if your software needs to be updated. This old buzzard hadn’t even been turned on for a while, so nothing had been run. So first, Windows Update has to update itself, which requires a reboot. So, OK. I’m game.

Now Windows Update presents me with a list of Required Recommended Suggested Essential Probable Estimated Punctuated Quadrupled Actuated Separated Updatable Updates Among Which I May Choose Select All Select None Start Over.

Since now I am lost, I select Select None. Then I hunt through the list, which is longer than springtime, find Internet Explorer 8, which I believe is even younger than Internet Explorer 7, and click it. My luck holds, and in just a few seconds it is downloading and installing onto the computer. I am gayer than laughter.

The computer prestidigitates, and Internet Explorer 8 shimmers into view. Back to the Comcast web site I glide, feeling quite like my pre-Aug. 28, 2011 self. Download, install, click, click. I grab the Sunday paper and wait. The old buzzard is slow.

I don’t realize it now, but I have fallen into a trap. Some undamaged portion of my brain has recognized that I am performing a task that I’ve done many times before, and performing it well, and is bathing my brain in chocolate-covered waves. At the same time, the damaged portion of my brain forces me to keep sneaking a look at the monitor, as it obediently marks the progress of the installation.

And finally the trap is sprung.

The installation finishes, and I allow a smile across my face. I have succeede—What?? Not enough memory?

The antivirus software says it doesn’t have enough memory to run on this computer. All of those chocolate waves are gone. In their place are pulses of pain from behind my eyes moving backwards.

Having written software for a living, having written software installations for a living, I try to count the number of places a decent programmer could have written code to check to see if the computer being used was suitable. Obviously someone checked to make sure the right version of Internet Explorer was available. From what I recall, it is easy to check if enough memory is available.

Too many places. I can’t count them, the places a decent programmer could have checked memory, before I spent two hours rebooting and downloading and waiting and installing. I don’t know if I can’t count them because there are too many, or because my brain is addled, but in any event, they are there, and I have spent two hours going in one huge lopsided circle.

Nothing to do but take a nap. Without a diaper. I’m home, after all. No one’s chaining me to the bed.

Brilliantly bright

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You know how on TV shows when someone is unconscious everyone else asks, “Can he hear us?” The answer, I can tell you, is most definitely maybe.

I have some vivid memories of those 13 days of complete oblivion. Mostly of oblivion, but I do have nearly word-for-word recall of two friends, one standing on either side of me, one holding each hand, telling me where I was, telling me things were going to be fine, telling me that I was going to get better. And they have confirmed that this conversation actually happened.

However, I do not recall one moment of another friend praying a Native chant over me. I wish I did.

But I do have a brilliantly bright memory of the best moment of those 13 days. I opened my eyes and standing not two feet away was my son, staring down at me worriedly. I know I immediately broke into a big grin because I was so happy to see him. And he, a typical 13-year-old who-needs-a-mother type kid, burst into a huge grin right back.

I will never forget that grin, that smile, that brilliantly bright smile breaking across his face at me. It is one of those memories that parents wrap up and tuck into their hearts forever.