wrote_and_writ

Today, I got a little taste of what dementia might feel like, and I am NOT thrilled. So I was already feeling low due to a combination of cramps and chronic disrupted sleep (only got about 4 hours last night, and not consecutive). I go to class. There are 25 kids on the roster and 25 desks, so I rely on my seating chart for attendance. Three desks are empty, so I go through -- who’s absent? Curry, Anna, and Matthew. Great. But wait, the attendance program says Victoria is absent, not Anna. And there’s a kid in Anna’s seat. But it’s not Anna, is it? (I’ve gotten worse with faces as I’ve gotten older. It’s better since kids mostly stopped wearing masks, but still not great.)

So… are there four kids absent or three?

I’m talking through this, trying to make the attendance math work, and the kids are giggling but they aren’t saying anything. I figure they’re just giggling because Ms. Debra is a weird teacher and they like to laugh at me. Fair enough. Except the math isn’t mathing, especially as I hand back papers. I call for Anna. I look at the girl in Anna’s seat. She doesn’t come up. I call again, more insistently. Is… she Victoria? And just being cheeky and sitting in another seat?

I tell the kids to go to their assigned seats. No one moves.

I call Anna and look at her. She doesn’t get up.

I move on. I can’t deal with this right now. I have a headache.

I still have Anna’s and Victoria’s tests at the end.

I call William over. I trust William. He’s an outsider (his mom is Chinese and dad is American and he’s got a special schedule) like me. I point to Anna.

“Who is that girl?”

William looks at her. He hasn’t seen her all semester. He remembers -- it’s OLIVIA! Olivia, who moved at the end of the first term and WAS in this class before today. Olivia, who put on her old uniform and snuck (?) in to hang out with her friends because her new school is on holiday. (IIRC -- and that’s a big IF -- she and her family moved to New Zealand, so they might be on Easter break.)

Y’ALL. I LEGIT thought I was losing my mind. I recognized her, but once she moved and my class rosters got rearranged at the start of the new term, I put her out of my mind. So my brain recognized her as My Student but gave me no other information. None of the other kids offered information as I was clearly having a breakdown.

Or maybe not so clearly. I’m pretty silly a lot of the time, pretty dramatic, so maybe they thought I was just being silly and dramatic. They aren’t malicious kids, although they are sometimes naughty.

But none of them said, “Miss, that’s Olivia,” so I had to fight my brain and figure it out.

And that made me think -- is this what it was like for, say, my Granny, all the time? Seeing people that weren’t actually there and wondering why we were not backing her up? Asking for people who were long gone and being angry that we were keeping them from her?

Maybe I’m just being my silly and dramatic self, but it was a genuinely distressing ten minutes to not be able to trust my own mind because I couldn’t figure out what was going on.