The Dingbat

Out: 'ghost in the machine'. In: 'dingbat in my brain'

I don’t have my neuro-testing extravaganza week results back yet - except my EEG, which was deemed ‘abnormal’ and ‘suggestive of underlying cerebral dysfunction’. My main response to that so far is the very mature: “Your FACE is suggestive of cerebral dysfunction! You were just supposed to be ruling out seizure disorders, not throwing my right temporal lobe under the bus, you testing traitor. I LET YOU BRAID MY HAIR!”, and so I thought I’d write about something else this week.

Since the left side of my face started trying to kill me in July (and yes, I will be getting to that story in future posts!), I’ve listened to several memoirs about brain injuries and recovery, most recommended by friends. It’s fascinating to hear other people’s experiences and notice overlaps and points of departure with my own journey. At the same time, the accounts (at least the ones I’ve encountered to this point) tend to be so SERIOUS!

I mean, I get it. I’ve gone through shi*t in the past six months that no one should have to, and dealing with the resulting trauma is going to take a hot minute.

At the same time - and I have no idea whether it’s just how I roll or a function of the particular sort of brain injury I have - I feel much less like I’m fighting a battle or climbing Everest without oxygen than like my usual, brilliant lab partner has suddenly been replaced with a well-meaning incompetent.

Remember school group projects and/or science labs? If you got to choose, you’d immediately try to lock eyes with one of your friends who wasn’t just fun but who was also really well-organized, or who wasn’t just hot but was also excellent at math. I’ve been extremely fortunate so far: my mental lab partner(s) have generally been fantastic! But now, for the first time, I’ve had a complete dingbat added to the main crew. (OMG - or maybe there’s more than one? This raises questions of dingbat individuation that the part of my brain that is still completely off-line would need to answer, so I will proceed as though there is merely a single dingbat.)

Here is the difference between a great and a dingbat partner. If you said to your brilliant lab partner: “Could I have the scissors?”, they would say, “Of course” and hand them to you carefully, handles first. If you asked the dingbat the same question, they would look at you in surprise. “Scissors? I don’t have any scissors!” If you said, “But I just gave you the scissors a minute ago,” the dingbat would look around vaguely and then cheerfully hand you a screwdriver. (The scissors would never be seen again.)

A important feature of the dingbat is that they want to be helpful. Sure, they are flaky and unreliable, but they also wish you and your projects nothing but the best, and so they are always trying to help. This is equal parts annoying and adorable.

A few weeks ago, for instance, I was trying to make pumpkin bread. (Yes, this is about the only thing I have managed to bake or cook in the last six months, partly for reasons that will become clear soon.) In previous attempts, despite using a recipe, I had accidentally left out ingredients and/or combined them in the wrong order, and so this time I was being extra vigilant. I had combined all the dry ingredients in a four-cup measure while the butter was softening, and now it was time to cream the butter and sugar together. I got the sugar down from the pantry, and put the bag on the counter. “I need something to measure this in,” I told myself out loud, because sometimes this helps. “And it can’t be the four-cup measure because those are the dry ingredients and this needs to go with the butter.” I looked in the cupboard, couldn’t remember what I was looking for, and then the dingbat promptly poured the sugar into the four-cup measure with the flour and spices.

I say/blame ‘the dingbat’, because when I looked down and saw the sugar in the measuring cup, the sensation I felt wasn’t the familiar “D’oh!” of me screwing up (like when I’d forgotten to put eggs in another batch). Instead, it was the sensation of watching a small child you’re supervising dump his entire glass of orange juice into the dog’s water before you can stop him, “So she can have some too.” The floor is a sticky mess, and the dog is confused, but the child is very pleased with having helped.

Sometimes the dingbat orders groceries! That’s actually pretty funny. I’m so surprised when I start unpacking the bags and discover three identical boxes of Raisin Bran, or pasta! (Fortunately, it’s all been stuff we actually eat, so no real harm done.) Torbjorn gets a motherlode of treats this way, too, since the dingbat never thinks to check the cupboards before ordering more.

(Honestly, who wouldn’t want to give this guy all the treats??)

My personal favorite, though, is when the dingbat hands me random words instead of the ones I’m looking for. Andy and I were talking recently about how finances were going to be pretty tight this semester, with my disability benefits kicking in at just 60% of my normal salary (after the system finally grinds all the paperwork through). Finally, I shook my head and sighed. “For a while, anyway, I guess we’re just going to have to live like weasels.”

Like…WEASELS?! I really didn’t see that one coming.

And then, to make it clear that I hadn’t meant to say ‘weasels’, I followed up with, “You know, those famously impecunious, frugal … weasels?”

IMPECUNIOUS?? I don’t think I’ve ever said that word out loud in my entire life. But the dingbat reached deep. Couldn’t come up with ‘poor’; gave me ‘impecunious’ as a substitute. I still don’t know why ‘weasels’, unless I was going for church mice and the dingbat just got to ‘rodent’ and picked the first one it thought of? But I hereby offer it to all and sundry as a title for your unwritten novel, or a new band name: The Impecunious Weasels.

In conclusion, I do my best; the dingbat does its best. Really, that’s all we can ask of anyone or anything - even stupid EEG results that spell out things in black and white that I would vastly prefer a bit more hand-wavey.

Next week, maybe test results? Maybe something else. In any event, more exciting news from Brain Damage Diaries!