Perhaps it is exhaustion or aging – although I’d like to think I’m not that old – but I seem to be drawing blanks when trying to recollect a word. In the middle of a normal, lucid conversation, I will lose the perfect word to explain my thoughts. I pull out all the mental drawers in my mind and fumble around before attempting to describe the word. Often the person with whom I am speaking will have to take the clues I give to decipher my meaning.
This temporary dysphasia drives me crazy. Each time it happens, I attempt to laugh it off and not worry about it. Of course, the more it happens, the more I begin to worry. Is it a sign of early onset dementia? Could it be a symptom of a TIA (mini-stroke) or just typical midlife brain?
In spite of all Mom’s brain deficiencies, she seems to be able to find words although the flow of the words may be difficult to understand. When talking to the other people in the room – those she sees that I cannot – she doesn’t search for words. I don’t hear her saying “thing-y” or “you know.” Simple words like “accountability” have turned into long explanations in my own conversations: “You know, that idea when you are held responsible for your actions.” A tailgate has become “that thing-y on the back of the truck that you let down to load the bed.”
I know I am not alone in my search for words. Are our brains so overloaded, overstimulated, and overly exhausted as to make communication difficult? Or is it simply a matter of much communication being typed and texted and read that we simply become tongue-tied in conversation?
Remember the puzzle books that pre-dated phone apps? The “Fill-in-the-Blanks” or crossword puzzles which were a mainstay of passing the time? I do play similar games on my phone, but I’m not sure that it’s stimulating my brain the way those prehistoric paper and pencil games did.
Even writing checks can be difficult. Not to pick on anyone I know, but last week I received a check for $90 with “ninetety” written on the line. (To be fair, she noticed it before giving the check to me, but decided correcting it would be even more confusing to the bank!) I have the benefit of writing in longhand every day in piano students’ assignment books, but I have noticed that I rarely write more than a list with paper and pen and pencil in the rest of my day.
In addition, drawing a blank on names has been common my whole life. I have to work diligently to remember a name, but thanks to some tricks I’ve learned, I can usually manage that – at least for as long as I’m in that new person’s company. Drawing blanks on words, however, is a new phenomenon and, to be honest, a distressing and potentially embarrassing one!
I can almost hear some of you replying to my lament with “just wait until you get a little bit older.” I know I don’t have the years of living that many of you have and maybe this is just the beginning, but drawing blanks is no fun.
