There Goes What Was Left of My Mind
Months of isolation in my home. The death rate of Covid going higher every day. A Lame Duck President attempting a coup. Wonderful drugs for Covid that only the rich can get. The good news: there’s a vaccine, and it’s been approved. Bad news: it may be months before enough people can be vaccinated before any good will come of it for the country. More bad news: the anti-vaxers who will refuse to get the vaccine. What possible effect could all of this have on my brain?
I used to be an active working person. I was organized, purposeful, social, and loved to make people smile, if not laugh. I have a masters degree in English education. I have a reasonably high IQ. I exercised regularly in the pool with friends who laughed and chatted the entire hour, so the time flew, and exercise was fun. I did a lot of walking, from the parking lot to the buildings, to my classrooms, in my classrooms, and back out to the parking lot. I walked tall (for a 4'11" person) and felt professional.
Fast forward to today. I got a notice that a bill had failed to go through automatic payment (I have no idea why) but I had been meaning to cancel that service anyway, so I called them. I hate making business phone calls; I can never seem to find what I’m looking for on their menu of options. And I am so sick and tired of hearing “We are experiencing an unusually high volume of callers. Please hang on. Your call will be taken by the next available agent. Your call is important to us.” Obviously a lot of other people are calling with problems, too, so keep telling me how important I am to you.
So I push a button (does it matter which one on the menu really?) and get the high volume spiel and plan to do something while I wait. I think I was either cleaning out my thousands of e-mails asking for donations or I was just drifting off when a person finally saved me from the very boring music. I stated my problem. He was very polite and spoke English, so things were going well. I owed $50 from last month’s failed payment and $50 for this month’s bill, and I wanted to cancel my account. He put me back to sleep with the music for a while and finally came back with my total amount owed: $583.43. I had expected a penalty for cancelling my contract, but that seems a little high. I didn’t argue; they have the upper hand, so we agreed he’d send me a letter via snail mail, and I can take care of it when I get the letter.
Now it’s time to look at my checking account to see if I can afford this bill. I seem to have plenty of money, so, although it will certainly make a dent, I can handle it. Then I started thinking, something I think I’m out of practice doing. Why is there so much money in my account? There isn’t usually that much…wait. Did I pay the mortgage this month? Doesn’t that usually come out about now? Holy crap. I forgot about the mortgage payment. Who is my lender? I pay this bill every month, and I can’t remember who I pay it to. I go to my checkbook register to look up who I paid last month. But this is a new register, and it doesn’t go back that far. Where did I put the old register? Somehow I remember, find it, and find who I pay my mortgage to. I make the payment. My checking account now has far less money in it than it did before, and making a $583.43 payment isn’t going to work, unless I want to try to make it through the rest of the month on $36.
So the people who want $583.43 are not going to be happy when I pay them in two or three installments, but since I want to cancel the service anyway, they can’t do much to me. And I have this other bill that I’ve gotten for two months that says it’s being taken out of my account each month, but it’s not. I wonder whose account it is being taken from. Someday somebody’s going to notice, and I’m going to have a whopping bill to pay. Should I call and straighten it out? Of course I should. And I will. Someday. But they are happy, and I am happy, so why rock the boat?
See? My mind is gone, wandering off in a field somewhere with nothing to do except procrastinate and hope things miraculously get fixed. I’m pretty sure I didn’t used to be like this. But maybe my memory isn’t as good as it used to be, either.
