Loss of Wisdom

02.16.06

            This past week has not been a good one.  I seem to be exhibiting a remarkable shortage of brain power.

            I’m thinking either some gray matter leaked out last week when I had my wisdom teeth pulled, or a whole lotta wisdom was actually stored within those bony nuisances that rested along my lower jaw bone.

            Something. 

            According to everyone I know, I am OLD to have so recently had this surgery.  So maybe as you age and your brain gets full the wisdom teeth (if you still have them) become an overflow container for common sense.

            Here’s an example. 

            I got sent home after this minor surgery with prescriptions and a whole lot of instructions that  I was too dazed to comprehend or remember.  One my prescription bottles has a white sticker with bold black letters that reads, “Take with FOOD.”

            Ha-ha.  That’s a joke, right?  I just had three teeth removed and it feels like I might as well have had my jaw wired shut.  But my husband (who never reads instruction manuals for anything) is so gullible he believes everything that happens to be written on a bottle of pain pills.  At supper time he made cheese-broccoli soup and stood over me while I ate it. 

            The next day my daughter is home from the babysitter and before leaving for work my husband says to her, “Tell Mommy to eat today.” 

            Thankfully the memory of a 2 year old is a bit sketchy.  I avoid food and she doesn’t harass me about it.  I spend the day on the couch with an ice pack to my face,  popping pain pills as often as the directions allow.  Okay, maybe a little oftener than the directions allow. 

            Thank the powers that be yet again for the creation of Dora the Explorer.  My kid can count to ten perfectly in Spanish, something she is not quite able to do yet in English.  Yay!  Go Dora!

            Late in the afternoon I get a sudden horrendous debilitating pain in my gut.  Searing, stabbing, breath-catching pain.

            My daughter asks for some juice.  I manage to make it to the refrigerator, hunched over, clutching my abdomen, and pour her some orange juice.  But I can’t make it back to the couch.  I go to my knees on the kitchen floor, barely able to breathe, and then finally curl into a ball on the linoleum.  I lay there gasping and thinking, “Okay, this is pathetic.”

            My daughter comes back for me.  “What are you doing?” Her voice rises with the word “doing,” exhibiting what I call her Exaggerated Questioning Voice, which I will henceforth abbreviate as EQV.

            “It’s okay, Miss, Mommy’s resting.”

            She pulls at my shirt, “No Mom!  Nap on couch!  On couch, Mommy!”

            Deep breath.  I can do it.  If Dora were here she could do it, so I can do it.

            I get to the couch. 

            And I smell something funky.  Oh, don’t tell me she needs her diaper changed?  She confirms this.  “Change me, Mom,” and the final straw, “Need to eat, Mom.  Hungry.”

            The pain comes in rolling waves and I know that I can’t do it.  I grab the phone and call my husband, “I’m sick.  You need to come home right now because your daughter  needs her diaper changed and she needs food and I can’t move.”  I start crying and hang up the phone.

            My Little Miss comes and pushes my hair out of my face and says, “Oh no, Mom, you need a Kleenex,” and she runs upstairs, reappearing a few minutes later with a Kleenex

            My husband arrives home, changes the offending diaper, makes my girl a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and asks her, “Did mom eat today?”

            She says, “Eat?” (EQV).  “Mom?” (EQV).  “No!”  Her use of the word “no” is loud and strong and definite.  So much for memory impairment.

            He makes me a PB&J sandwich, pours a glass of milk, says, “Didn’t I tell you to eat?” and stands over me with a whip (kidding, really).  Then he picks up the prescription bottle and shows it to me, “Right here.  See this?  Take with FOOD.  Do you think they’re making it up?”

            I shrug.  I tear the sandwich into tiny bites and slip some to the dog when my husband isn’t looking. 

            The kid rats me out.  “Mom feeding Jazz!” and she claps with glee.  We have a rule, you see, about not feeding the dog from the table.

            Dang, I’m living with the assistant principal from Junior High School and his mini-Nazi sidekick.

            And this is only the beginning.

 

To read Loss of Wisdom from the Reader Weekly archives, click below ....

http://www.readerweekly.us/2006/358/Sheri_Johnson.html