I think, therefore I am! Just barely

"Ah, What a wonderful day. I feel so alive today. I think I will go for a vigorous walk on the beach."

My wife looked up from book, looked at me and just shook her head. She didn't say a word. She didn't have to say anything. It was "the look."

"What?.....What does that look mean?" I queried recklessly.

"Hmmm....Do you really want to know? Really?....I mean really?

"Sure. Of course!!!

Well, the little French lady said I was on life support and I didn't even know it. She itemized a few things that might give me some clues.

She started with my sleeping habits. She accuses me of snoring. She cannot show a shred of evidence of this and quiet frankly I didn't believe her until I woke myself with my snoring. She tells me I have wide variety of snores. She even has names for them like:

The lip flapper, which is both lips flapping while I am apparently trying to blow some kind of bubble.

The Oinker, which she says sounds like two hogs fighting over a sow.

The whistler, which is done with the mouth shut and you whistle a little tune through the nostrils about four hundred times per night.

The full Monti which is all of these plus a few other bodily noises.

She says I have a few other minor snores and sounds which hasn't named or catalogued yet.

I do not do well when I get up to go to the bathroom. I run into furniture, I drink a lot of water before I go to bed. Perhaps it is the beer I drank an hour before. For some reason beer makes me thirsty. Does anybody else have that problem?

Well anyway I usually just make it to the bathroom milliseconds ahead of time. No problem! Well...maybe a little problem. I should wear my glasses since I am blind without them. This would probably improve my toilet accuracy but I really didn't have time. Usually only happens once a night. Not bad for a guy my age.

At least I don't have the situation of my neighbor, Tommie. He says his system is so fine tuned that he knows when his system will act. He pees at six thirty, he poops at seven fifteen. Sadly Tommie doesn't wake up till eight. That is what his wife told me.

Lately I have caught my wife doing something strange. I woke up with a start from a sound sleep and my wife is holding a mirror under my nose. I asked her what she was doing. "Just checking to see if you were breathing. You haven't snored for two hours.

I thought.....Oh, never mind."

In the morning I am much better. I just don't want anybody talking to me for the first hour. I am little cranky. Why am I cranky? Well, I have to change the cat litter. My wife can smell it. I can't. Then I usually eat my moldy toast, fetid omelet, stale cereal, rotten eggs. All of this stuff I fished out of the garbage can in the closet. I don't tell my wife because it hard to explain why I am eating penicillin bread and sour chunky milk.

She will say, " I threw that away because it went bad" and I will say something like," It did taste a little funky and unsavory." "Funky?.....That stuff would gag a maggot." So basically my taste buds are dead and my nose doesn't do anything for me except whistle four hundred times a night.

I really not to keen about talking because my hearing system doesn't kick in until I have had my second cup of what I now assume is coffee. My wife says to me every morning, " I had my second cup of coffee." Two minutes later I say, "Did you have your second cup of coffee?" The wife will say," I just told you I had my second cup of coffee", which brings up a personal dilemma. Am I losing my memory or my hearing?

Good question. I have lost so many things lately it may be my memory....or not.

What's her name usually finds what I have lost.

I should take a personal inventory.

Let me see....I can't see, smell, hear, taste, remember, I'm losing things like hair on my head. I think gravity has something to do with the hair. My eyebrows are flourishing. My nose hair is really out of my control. My ears are very hairy. Every time I go to get my haircut, they take more hair off other parts of my body than they take off my head. Some parts of my body work really well, like my colon and bladder. Actually my brain still works pretty good as long as no memory is required.

Some times my wife just looks in my eyes, shakes her head and mutters, "space for rent."

Maybe I won't go for a walk on the beach.

A Beautiful Mind (for first grade).

I have a strange brain. It must be so. I remember things I really don't need to remember and I have very little use for. I can remember my first grade teacher. I can look at a first grade picture and remember most of the kids in the class. I guess that information would be handy if I go to a first grade class reunion. I could walk up to "Beaver Smith" and say, "You got your teeth fixed and you're taller than you were in first grade".......and he would say, "And you are who?"

My first grade teacher was Mrs. McDonald. At least at the start of the school year. Actually her name was Miss Danaher at the start of the year. She married Mr. McDonald. She got up in front of class one day and said she had changed her name and was leaving us. All the girls got hysterical, all the guys did not care. She was replaced by Mrs. Phinney.

The only thing I remember about first grade was a book about "Crictor the Boa Constrictor", who was a friendly snake. A good thing, I might add. I heard later on that

Boa Constrictors could get a little cranky when they are hungry. I did not know that then, otherwise I would not have pestered my mother for two years to get a Boa Constrictor. The other story I remember was about "The Little Engine that could."

A rather pointless little homily about...whatever!!!!

Now the telling part: They started talking about numbers in first grade. I had no interest in math. All my male classmates could count to ten. All the female classmates could count to a hundred. Ordene Fatflank, the smartest girl in our class could count to a thousand and she could do it in reverse.

When I graduated from first grade I only knew one number: Seven. I did not see the importance of math until eighth grade. I could count to ten by then. Counting my money was a math thing. I started to learn. My ability to remember useless information carried me right up till junior high school.

I remember that Dick and Jane were introduced in first grade, but we really got into heavy in second grade.

"Run, Spot, Run. See Spot Run"

"See Dick, See Spot, See Jane"

"Jane sees Dick, Run Dick, run."

I may have misquoted but it was something along those lines.

First grade was wonderful except for the Math.

My brain is still strange. I never did get it straightened out.