An Absent Mind Read Online Free PDF Page B

on. I thought that was pretty silly. Yes, I have forgotten a few things, maybe more than a few, but I am still normal—more or less.
    I told them I still remembered a lot from a long time ago. Like when Harry Potash had tried to steal Sharon Wertheimer from me in the fifth grade, and how I had decked him in the school yard. That had cost me a week of recesses, but it was well worth it!
    I had always been a tough guy. In fact, I got suspended for a brawl in the tenth grade. Ian Coulter was the resident bully and self-appointed chief anti-Semite of the school. Coulter was picking a fight with Buddy Rubin, the class weakling. He grabbed Buddy’s thick glasses from his pointed nose, made a show of dropping them in almost slow motion to the icy sidewalk, and then slammed his heel down, crushing them. I could live with that, because you can’t be everyone’s protector. But then Coulter crossed the line. He called Buddy a kike.
    Coulter missed the rest of the term because of a dislocated jaw and a broken arm, and it was only March. I was suspended for a month. That didn’t sit well with Larry—I called my father Larry sometimes because he seemed to like it. And for some strange reason, it made me feel closer to him, like we were buddies. Anyway, Larry went apeshit, and I didn’t see daylight on the weekends till summer vacation.
    So I told the people who had taken over my living room that I could remember lots of things.
    Monique put her hand on my shoulder and said, “Do you remember what Dr. Tremblay told us about how it’s normal for Alzheimer’s patients to have good long-term memory but lose short-term memory?”
    “No,” I said, “I don’t remember.” But my best guess is, so far at least, that I only have Sometimer’s, not Alzheimer’s.

Joey

    Looking Back
    T here were so many clues, but I guess it’s kind of like vegetable soup. If you have one piece of carrot in a broth, it’s not vegetable soup. If you add some celery and beets, it’s probably not, either. So when is it? There is no set amount or type of vegetables when one can definitively say that it’s vegetable soup. And I think it’s the same with Alzheimer’s. It just starts to germinate and suddenly one day it’s the real McCoy.
    I remember when I met Dad for lunch downtown last year. He looked fine and was quite talkative. When I said good-bye outside the restaurant, he seemed at a bit of a loss.
    He glanced up and down the street and finally said with a sheepish grin, “Son, I forget where I parked the car.”
    I thought to myself that was no big deal. But when I asked him where he thought it might be, the question elicited only a blank look and a shrug of his shoulders.
    “You have no idea?” I asked.
    He told me that he had been preoccupied with an audit by Revenue Canada. Who could argue with that? If I were undergoing a tax audit, I might very well forget where I’d parked my car—or, for that matter, if I even owned one! Anyhow, I suggested we start walking around and looking—and there it was—just across the street, half a block away.
    The real kicker, and I can’t believe it didn’t set off alarm bells in my head, was when he called me up and asked me to go to a hockey game. I love hockey, especially the Montreal Canadiens, and we hadn’t been to a game together in over twenty-five years—and then only after I practically got on my knees and begged him to take me for my tenth birthday.
    We arrived at the Bell Centre a half hour early. I asked Dad for the tickets as we approached the entrance. He shuffled through the pockets of his overcoat and then his pants. By the pained expression on his face, I knew we had a problem—and we did. He had forgotten the tickets and said he had no idea where he had put them.
    I could see he was getting agitated, so I said, “Pops, no problem; I’ll just buy a couple.” The box office was sold out, so I finally had to purchase seats from a scalper—what a rip-off! Luckily, I had been