Daily Archive

Word-finding wasn’t a problem for me until last week. Passing a former professor of mine in the cinderblock and concrete stairwell with 3 bags-school, computer, baked goods-prompted him to tell me I was carrying too many bags. Too many bags, Susan!

Though I have a strange fondness for irascible old men, interactions with them fluster me nonetheless. But I can usually rely on my brain to rally a response within the expected conversational timeframe, fleeting as it may be.

I had a clear vision of a pack mule. The words that my speaking system produced belied that clarity, though they would fit, however tangentially, into one of those word relationship webs I can also picture in fine detail but am currently unsure of the precise terminology for. Camel. Donkey. Dromedary. Pachyderm, I thought with desperate triumph, so close yet only as far as I managed to get.

By that time there were two flights of concrete stairs and an ocean of regret (all mine) between us. That he remembered my name 3 years after I took his class-that should have warranted a far better display of mental on-it-ness on my part.

As so often happens after a sign of lost focus, I have struggled with vocabulary ever since. Soon I’ll be communicating solely through pleading expressions and frantic gesticulations, a round of charades gone to shambles.

Or maybe I’ll get over it.