Losing My Mind, One Cell At A Time

I’m fond of telling people that having children caused me brain damage.  And when I say “fond,” I mean that I’m forced to confess this to people after humiliating moments of raging stupidity brought about by having birthed said children.

To wit, recently I was at the park with the kids, talking to another mom.  I can’t recall precisely what we were discussing because, as I mentioned, I have brain damage, and I was trying to describe the part of the jungle gym that Ginger was going down… you know… the thing that angles down to the ground.

The other mom stared at me blankly.

“You know, that silver thing that kids sit on and then scoot down… from the top of the jungle gym to the ground… that thing.”

“Oh,” said the other mom.  “You mean the slide?”

“Yes, that’s it!” I said, at which point I promptly dropped to the ground and pretended to suffer from a sudden, severe ankle injury to distract her from my swiss cheese mind.

It’s amazing: I can remember random details from 30+ years ago but can’t recall what happened yesterday.  For example, thanks to a temporary childhood infatuation, to this day, I can still describe the technical differences in all the various figure skating jumps despite never having been a figure skater myself, but I couldn’t tell you who won the Super Bowl last year.  Given that I spent many years being a huge – HUGE – football fan, that makes this all the weirder (not to mention that my father, who took so much pride in my love of football, is so ashamed).

Another regularly occurring example: I can walk upstairs to do something and by the time I get there, forget what I’ve gone to do.  I can’t begin to count the number of times this has happened.  I used to think it was because I was sleep-deprived, but little Fred has been sleeping through the night for 15 months now so that’s no excuse.  Then I thought it was because I was malnourished, since every parent knows that having a newborn means you can barely find time to use the bathroom, let alone feed yourself.  But I have no problem finding time to feed myself these days.

Then I thought it might be because I let my brain go after leaving my job, and reveled in parenting magazines, learning the proper way to sanitize baby bottles, puree sweet potatoes, treat eczema, and soothe a screaming infant.  But I’ve since abandoned that mindset and now read about current events pretty fanatically (although I can still get through entire news articles without being certain of what I have just read.  This tends to happen when a small child wearing underwear on her head is banging on your arm and shouting your name while you are trying to read).

So perhaps you can see why I’ve concluded that I suffer from permanent brain damage.  I just hope that I never forget where my underwear should go.