No Words, Wrong Words, Frustrations, and Belly Laughs

As we progress through this experience of being seniors, we are experiencing both frustrations and laughs.

You see, it's frustrating to spew out the wrong word and even more frustrating to not find the word at all. The former tends to happen to Sue and the latter to me. For example, I was trying to tell friends about meeting someone they knew at Balderson, but danged if I could come up with the name at the time: "The town over there (pointing vaguely westward). Near um um Perth. Where they make cheese. Or used to make cheese. And they have stores there."

Sue, however, doesn't fumble much for words but just tends to throw in the wrong ones willy nilly, which she doesn't usually realize until she gets some strange looks coming back at her.

She was recently telling some friends or I should say trying to tell some friends about the haunted tours that they do at the cemetery come Halloween. Except, instead of cemetery, it came out seminary. Well, the mental pictures I got of touring a haunted seminary led me to much mirth. So much so, that weeks later, I can still recall that moment at a time when I am at a point in my life when recalling just about anything becomes a victory of sorts.

Then, when Danica was looking at my birthday card from Allyson and Alycia from out west, Sue told her that it was from Auntie Heather and Auntie Alycia. Danica had a time puzzling that out because Auntie Heather is Sue's sister and lives in Toronto while Auntie Alycia is our daughter-in-law who lives in Vancouver. How in the world they would somehow combine to send one birthday card was indeed a profound puzzlement for the child.

Now, this next example isn't quite the same thing, but it does involve lack of clarity in what one says or at least in how one says it. And it did result in the belly laugh of the title for this piece.

Picture the three us — Sue, me and Danica — sitting in the coffee shop after enjoying a light breakfast. We are talking about exercise classes. Yoga is mentioned because Dani is signed up for Yoga this fall. From there the conversation shifts to Zumba for some reason. But the belly laugh comes when Sue decides to tell us how beneficial belly dancing is, not that she knows this from personal experience.

In the course of her thesis, she says something like: "And all you wear is a coloured sash around your waist."

Now, I knew what she meant, but I looked up to see a rather strange look on Danica's face as she tried to process the information: "All you wear?"

Which is what led to the belly laugh as I made the most of Sue's faux pas. I am not exaggerating, when I say belly laugh as I got to the point where my stomach was almost hurting. Somehow, being in the coffee shop seemed to make it all the funnier, and another round or even two ensued.

Laughs like that are quite wonderful. Too bad they come along so seldom. And too bad they come as a result of atrophying brains.