By Denise of Not What It Seems

…is my body apparently.  No longer blessed with even talents for stating the obvious or spouting florid cliches, I am at the mercy of my bodily functions. Or perhaps malfunctions is the better word:
Will I sweat too much if I wear this? Will I make it home before I pee in my pants? Is that a headache starting? Can I take a nap now?

I am not sure if I am an infant or a 123 year old woman… I do know it is terribly boring. I don’t even want to talk to myself.

When I do, I find I am misunderstanding what I am saying. Like when I said I wanted our bedroom to be a place of refuge, I must have thought I said REFUSE because at the moment it looks like a badly maintained town dump.

I used to work with a young man who would hop up onto a desk and tell us, in a monotone, ” I have low energy!” Yep, buddy, me too. Not even enough to hurl myself onto a nearby desk.

I find myself allowing many things which would normally send me screaming to a therapist and a bottle of tranquilizers rolling off my back.  For example, the very large woman at the bar the other night who displayed her infected belly button.

I used to be able to understand what anyone was saying, from the most disabled person to German tourists. Now, a southern accent is foreign to me. On Wednesday, all day, I wanted to say, in my best John Cleese imitation, ” I don’t understand your banter.”

Or anything at all you are saying to me. Please drawl a bit slower.

My brain is gone. How much longer can it be before I am burning down the kitchen trying to make my third breakfast of the day while asking my husband if it is time for dinner?

The notion that I am merely a body was confirmed yesterday when I attended a substitute teacher training. I had hoped I would stand out from the crowd, my references and experience wowing the administrators and garnering great praise.  Instead I was member of a herd of fifty people, rushed through trainings in OSHA regulations as well as recognizing and reporting suspected abuse, filling out paperwork ( the invitation to attend stated in BOLD that we should bring a pen with us), being photographed and fingerprinted and then listening to a fifteen minute talk about working as a sub. That’s it.  When it was over I was one frightened cow. Who needed to pee.

I was also the only person there without a prominent tattoo. Or four.