Life is generally better lately. At least in the sense I am getting out of bed more easily these days, not in the sense that America isn’t on fire and 2020 can’t come fast enough. But I’m here for the small things, if only to sustain me for raging against the big ones. To celebrate, here are a couple of embarrassing things that have happened to me.

* I’ve accidentally believed I was 45 years old since February, but it turns out I’m still only 44.

This happened because I went in to get some medical tests done. My dad had either just died or was about to, and I was getting blood drawn to make sure my vitamin deficiency was being addressed. One side effect of the deficiency can be depression and memory loss. So, not super on the ball is what I’m saying.

The phlebotomist handed me my paperwork and said, “Please look over your information and make sure everything is correct.”

I dutifully scanned my information. Correct name, address, birthdate. Wrong age.

“It says I’m 45, but I’m 44,” I pointed out, a little irritated. Because what are blood test results, if not a bunch of numbers? If the computer couldn’t even calculate my (relatively massive) proper age from a birthdate, how could I trust it with the tiny percentages concerning microscopic particles in my blood?

I tapped the 45. The phlebotomist leaned over, eyes flickering across the printout. “Well, if you think it’s wrong, circle it and initial.”

No frown of consternation or blush of embarrassment. No, Well, that is extremely weird. Just a blank face I immediately recognized from time interacting with, and seeing others interact with, my dad as his dementia showed itself. It’s the look of someone not willing to invest the time to sort out your shit; they are going to let you go on in your incorrect reality because if a person is making such a weird mistake, it’s definitely an indicator something more faulty is going on.

“You have a ghost in your machine,” I pressed, wanting her to acknowledge the error, realizing as the words left my mouth that what I said hadn’t made sense. Although, for me in social situations, this is apparently a feature, not a bug.

Blank face. A gesture to the pen.

I circled the 45 as though I was signing my own mental health exam failing grade, still thinking, It’s gotta be wrong. I am definitely 44. Because I spend half of every year preparing for the next new number, and 45 has never been in my prep talk. I’m not wrong!

Actual footage of me at the lab, being asked to circle the mistake:

It was a very bad feeling. I mean, computers aren’t wrong. Not about basic math.

I went home and told my husband how I probably had dementia, and good luck to him, and please smother me with a pillow when it got too bad. He said, “Well, it’s 2019, and you were born in what? 1974. What’s nine minus four?”

I hate math, even at this most basic level. It always trips me up. This has nothing to do with cognitive decline. I got out my fingers.

“Five.” My husband supplied. I put my fingers away. Forty five.

We embarked on an extremely awkward silence. I started the business of telling myself I had a vitamin deficiency. I’d just had a birthday a couple of months ago, and had probably forgotten to do the emotional/cognitive switchover. I mean, my last birthday was so uncelebrated, I spent it on an airplane, on my way to visit someone else’s relatives. I’d remembered everyone else’s birthday – I couldn’t stay on top of everything.

Internet, I’ve spent that day to this week quietly trying to accept what happened. Then! Snuggled in bed and talking about something unrelated, I confessed to my husband this terrible empathy with my father in his dementia; how unsettling the phlebotomist’s blank face, the unmooring sensation that I’d crossed into some deficit so significant a stranger wouldn’t pull me back into right thinking by pointing out I’d made an error. They’d just let me float away into this strange world of self-doubt and inability to see exactly how things had gone so wrong. How I couldn’t shake the feeling it wasn’t me that was wrong, but the world.

“Well, are you sure? Maybe you are 44,” my husband said.

I mentioned the basic math lecture five months prior. OK, more truthfully, I punched him in the shoulder and said, “Don’t fuck with me.” And he argued it might be a mistake, until we devolved into a parody recap of GOOD WILL HUNTING.

Reference:

“Yeah, but if your birthday’s in December, you haven’t had your birthday for this year.”

My husband and I spent like legit five minutes in bed, counting on our fingers, factoring in years, months, time of years. That’s the thing about being unmoored. It can become contagious between two people closely aligned. Finally, we decided to go down and ask google, just to make sure. Results:

I’m still 44 motherfuckers.

Also, WTF, blood testing place?

*

This past week we went on our annual trek to the Sierra Nevada, and in the grand condition of such things, the two bed/two bath cabin was at one time inhabited by…. *gets out fingers* twenty people. Here’s the tweet commemorating  how that went:

On vacation. Got in a situation where I had to confess to husband, “I’m a shy pooper.”

Him, initially comforting in tone: Everybody’s a shy pooper, Anne.

Him, increasingly baffled: Nobody wants to poop in a crowd.

Him, suppressing laughter: There’s no SHOW POOPERS ANNE.

— Anne Nahm (@AnneNahm) July 9, 2019

Annnnd here’s some pictures. OF THE SIERRA NEVADA, pervs.

In continuing news:

Little’s had another major life upheaval, seemingly unrelated to previous medical malfeasance/birth/roof collapse/deceased father upheavals. Tangentially related, I once went to a memoir workshop in my town. The assignment: write a short essay about your childhood, find a partner, and read your story out loud to them. However, the instructor failed to tell us we’d be reading aloud, face to face with a stranger, until after we’d written our essays.

I wrote about a two year section in my childhood where Disaster Struck: Uncle died, our family moved, dog died, Dad almost died, Mom almost died, Little born, Granddad died, other uncle died, uncle’s wife got cancer, their kid burned the house down, we moved again. I was so exhausted writing the essay, I completely dead-eyed my recitation. As the list just kept going on, I could feel my audience of one getting increasingly wide eyed. I don’t know what happened. I started giggling. I mean, I tried to tried to maintain, but by the house burning down, I could barely talk. Worse, I laugh-kidnapped (laughnapped?) my new partner with the contagion of hysteria. “Why on earth are we laughing?” she could barely get the words out. That’s kind of how I feel about Little’s situation. Like holy shit, what else are you going to do but lose your marbles?

My mom has a shoulder injury for which doctors have declined to do surgery. Instead, a lot of rehab for her! Which is good because I guess it gives her a commitment and a project, scary because she has limited use of her arm, and pain, and if anyone’s gonna fix it, it’s gonna have to be her.

On our last phone call, I asked if she had any plans for Dad’s memorial. She said she just had to do it in her own time, in a tone that made me suspect there will perhaps never be a memorial. I mean, we’re five months out at this point. Is there an expiration on these things?

I’m like 80% OK with never having a memorial (I don’t need anybody else around for me to say goodbye to him) 10% horrified that maybe she’ll decide to have a memorial in some weird time in the future (like, what if she’s ready to do it in three years? I guess that’s OK, but I kind of suspect people traditionally do it sooner than that for a reason.) Fifteen percent passingly sad my dad might never get a standard funeral where everyone gets together to say goodbye (Isn’t this a common fear – to die unacknowledged and unwept? Will other people think we didn’t care about him? OTOH, I can’t honestly see my dad giving a damn about what other people think, even in death. Likewise, dragging him to social events was like giving a cat a bath, so he’d probably be sympathetic to Mom, as well as likely glad he doesn’t have to attend another function in any cosmic form.) And another 10% pissed off that it’s a loose thread dangling at someone else’s whim. Plus maybe some varying percentage afraid to let down my guard about seeing The Exes (Because that is when they will strike! My adrenal gland is quite sure of it).

Anne Nahm, 100% bad at math, 175% fabulous at self identification.