Sink

Here's a funny story:

This morning I picked up the two-liter plastic bottle (formerly filled with a soft drink) which I've been refilling with water to keep by my bed / computer-side and discovered quite a few grayish, gelatinous-veiled dots along its bottom: incipient microbial colonies - Streptococcus, I'd guess, given both its ubiquity and its propensity to form biofilms. I didn't stop to plate or stain the damn things.

But it left me in a bit of a bind, because you see I've been cutting down on my intake of carbonated sugar-water lately, so my next appointed water bottle was still over half full. I cheated a bit and swallowed a mouthful of water after brushing my teeth, then resigned myself to a compromise, to slightly increase my soda intake for today and try to get the bottle ready sooner. This still left me quite parched, but luckily I was able to add a few deliciously moist vegetables to my lunch. Still thirsty, I decided that tea with its lower concentration would probably help more. It was only around mid-afternoon, as I was finishing my second helping of tea and washing the mug in the sink that it occurred to me that I could pour myself a cup of water from the faucet, bypassing the refillable bottle altogether... as I've done ten thousand times before in my life... as I'd done only a day prior... that in fact pouring myself a cup of water from the sink is a perfectly rational (and dare I say it, even mundane) course of action. Eureka!

Odd how our minds work, isn't it? Or should I say how our brains work, sclerotized independent subroutines looping around the self, evading the mind, dodging the consciousness which spawned them, dictating so many of our bodies' daily motions, habits, reactions. Subroutines for all our routines. Hilarious, isn't it?

Now here's the really funny part. Both sides of my family tree have Alzheimer's, a disease with fairly high heritability. Funny how it affects your thinking about your own thinking, that guillotine blade above your head. Every lapse in your memory, every episode of deja vu or presque vu, every slip of the tongue, every struggle to remember someone's name, every blog post you meant to write once upon a time, every article you meant to look up on Wikipedia... or maybe you did but can't remember... they all get reinterpreted in terms of the imminent living death of early-onset dementia. Maybe I do have it. Maybe it's not dehydration debilitating my arthritic dendritics  but the plaques already building up. Maybe it beat the wrinkles to the punch. Maybe in ten years' time it'll be me, shuffling along, lost in my own apartment, terrified of all the strangers pretending to know me.

It's funny, isn't it?
Laugh, damn you.

Ah, well. If I have inherited it, then there's only one thing I have to remember anyway. To sink. No bottle needed, no cup. Just stuff a few rocks in my coat lining and take a very big gulp of water from a very deep lake. The wer-wolfe will not be a zombie.
Cheers.