Perception vs reality

I learned fairly early to not have sympathy for people with dementia. By having it. And having to rely on the judgement of others. That was the difficult part, because everyone else had worse perception and judgement than I did, and now I have to rely on theirs. I automatically lose every argument. Oh well. That's not so bad. They're the ones totally distressed seeing me lose it. The demented are not the ones suffering. Sympathy goes to the people around them who love them.

Even in that state there were still traces of the old me and the old situation. An incident comes to mind as I'm writing. We collected everyday for breakfast with our parents at one or another of their favorite restaurants. This was my dad holding his family together. I could no longer drive in that period. My younger brother drove from his house to my house to pick me up and we'd rendezvous with my parents. Over breakfast Mum told us a story about about her being a child and taken to visit her remote relatives. She describes them as hillbillies. They live in a wooden shack with no windows. Then when dinner time came one of them reaches through the window and grabs a chicken by the neck. The whole thing seems improbable and made up. First there are no windows and then there is a window to grab a chicken. I query this discrepancy.

My mother cannot explain the no windows then chicken window change in her story. My dad lights up, "See? See what I deal with all the time?" Now it's me and my dad questioning the sanity of my mother. Back in the car to drive me home, my brother is very cross with me. Livid, actually. He dresses me down for troubling Mum, and really angry with Dad for supporting my attack.

I said, "Look, I was paying attention to her story and trying my best to comprehend what she said. You should give me points for paying attention to detail and following along not attack me for questioning. I did not understand her." He said, "I understood her. She meant there was no glass in the windows. They were all busted out. What's so hard to understand about that?"

"Oh."

"Well, she said 'no windows,' not, 'no glass in the windows.' I visualized a hut with no windows then the next description boom, there's a window. It didn't fit. My question was for clarification, where you're facile enough to not need it. I'm not so facile as you. My visualization was frozen at a no-window hut."

Eventually I recovered. By way of surgery. Decades later I still have a hole in my skull from that. You can push your finger in it if you want. Come on. Try it. You might be surprised the number of people who do want to feel the hole in my head. It's closing very slowly but still there. I ended up being better off than before the whole degradation. And I could tell by NYT crosswords. I got to the point of not being able to understanding anything about any of the clues. Not one. Far less multiple solutions to pick from, or discerning misdirection. I gave up on them. Then after surgery all that was restored and significantly better than before. I could tell because I had little problem with Friday and Saturday level difficulty.

Yesterday a post on Ace about CNN being useless for news and malevolent as propaganda didn't say much itself, it just linked to a Twitter thread. But when you read down the thread then you see other members supporting CNN as valid and useful. And they are vehement in their support. These are the demented, no trouble to themselves, but trouble the people around them. I look at the member's picture and she appears a frumpy librarian type and I feel pity for her being so thick. Then I think, no, she's fine. It's everyone else who suffers. CNN is for her. And there are a lot of people like her. The rest of us suffer them.

One time I was in hospital and right off I saw something pleasing that I never saw before, an opaque plastic box filled with lollypops attached to the wall near the door out of reach of children. I wondered why it was labeled with a hazardous materials symbol. It didn't fit. Must be a hospital joke. I mentioned this to the first nurse I saw and she said, "that's a hypodermic needle disposal container."

There sure were a lot of needles in there. The whole atmosphere of the place went from cheerful and childlike and playful in an instant to dreadful and medical and heavy. I liked it better as lollypops.

My brain told me that my eyeballs see lollypops. That's what my brain wants to see.

That same thing happened again. A few days ago Legal Insurrection put up a post titled The Diseased Streets of San Francisco fronted with photo of a bin of lollypops. The post written by Leslie Eastman begins with a description of her wonderful time in Memphis, the fun family-oriented things that she did. So the box of lollypops fits. I visualized someone bringing a whole bin of lollypops to disperse among children. I visualized everyone there with a lollypop in their mouth. But I was wrong again. It's actually a bin full of needles.

My dad was such a stud. But I did not know that. My friends told me. They saw a photo of him in uniform that I grew up with and discerned his studliness from that single photo. When he was the  age of that photo he drove his whole family from one side of the country to the other. He was in the Air Force then. We could have flown. It would have been a lot easier and less expensive. He wanted us to see the whole country. And he wanted his automobile with him in Japan. In March we went from sloggy melting filthy season-long snow in Pennsylvania, to bright happy colorful sailboats on blue sea, and window gardens and flowers in the streets of San Francisco and gentle temperate clime. Now, that's my kind of town. Such a lovely beautiful energetic and happy interesting place. 

Decades later I have no desire whatsoever to go there anymore. The last visit was dreary and monotone gray. The weather itself cast a pall and veritably said, "stay away." Filthy in every aspect with rats visible in the restaurants. The street trash is the least of it. Vermin everywhere and with wires looped on the poles in expectation of a gigantic shakedown. The whole place anticipates biblical devastation. I think of my friends there and wonder what keeps them.