You'll Barely See It Coming

On Friday late, closing time in the restaurant, I met a woman with a little time on her hands who ordered a meal, ate it, but wouldn't leave until she told me about her homemade cookies which she was marketing, and I, being an expert, was to judge for myself these self-described treasures. She would bring me some. She paid with a bad credit card, then after a blank look and a little bit of confusion gave me a good one and carefully put the bad one away, in her left pocket. She put the good one into her wallet.

After the meal she came to sell me the cookies, but she said her meal was bad, threw it away, couldn't say exactly what was wrong, it was gone, but she would gladly fish it out of the trash to show me, for my expert opinion. I wondered if she thought I should taste it. She was very friendly. I didn't believe her about the meal, after 30 years in this business you get a sense about people and food, but I gave her an apple, no charge, and then when she asked for a cup of tea, I felt even more sure that she was lying about the meal, and that she just wanted something for nothing, but I wasn't in the mood to fight, so I gave her that, too. Then she brought up the cookies again. I nodded, agreed to taste them, seemed the best way to move her along, I think she would have contested any other strategy, or worse yet, elaborated on her methods. So I nodded again. She was undeterred. Asked me my name, said she'd drop them off for me. I hoped she'd forget. She acted like she knew me. From way back. There was something about her, too familiar, inappropriate, I don't know what else, but she wasn't alright.

Was it Alzheimer's? Or another form of dementia, I wondered, the lines are so fuzzy who can tell, although Alzheimer's is always my first guess, so much publicized it's a well marketed disease that we all think we have. Memory loss is such a tricky thing. We plan to avoid Alzheiner's if we can, but in spite of crosswords, sudoku, writing other-handed, learning to ride a unicycle, writing exacting poetry, and other shaman's tools for sanity, I don't see very much hope of fooling the reaper. It's coming baby, and if we don't get it, someone we love will. It's part of the triple threat, cancer, heart disease, Alzheimer's, the triumvirate of deadly diseases. I'm going to get one. You too, probably. God, whatever happened to dying peacefully in our sleep?

We shall see. I think.