One foot after the...

 

by Craig Willms 

3/10/2025

In an earlier post called "The Hole In My Head" I was issuing a warning to family and friends that I felt the oncoming headwind of dementia. There is no actual evidence or diagnosis official or otherwise, but one knows oneself, and I'm losing it. Bear with me, it really doesn't matter to me if you see it or not, I do.

What am I talking about exactly? I've mostly forgotten why I even started writing this down, but one thing that stuck with me during my morning's adventures was how flabbergasted I got doing a few simple things. Regardless that part of the challenge was actually technology related and may have been confusing to your average 60-something senior. It was something I did for a living just a few short years ago, it should have been like riding a bike. What was it? I was resetting a password!!! Three rounds of frustration and at least two phone calls, finally, my wife looked over my shoulder as I did the exact same thing for the third or fourth time - and this time it worked. I was the kid with the kindergarten teacher urging me on. Such a good boy, he tries hard.

Later that morning I was driving down to my hometown, going to a friends place to payback some money I'd borrowed. I'd been at his place once before but didn't remember exactly where it was. No, that's not the issue, no one can be faulted for not knowing someplace that they've only been to once. It was that I was having trouble navigating my hometown, a town that had been etched into my permanent memory. Regardless of cosmetic changes my internal compass should have gotten me through that town with my eyes tied behind my back. I had taken the fabled 'back roads' to kill time waiting for him to text me the street address. There were traffic circles that never existed before, and some new streets and buildings but the land was the land, it covered all the same ground. I had trod these acres a thousand times before. Somehow, I was LOST? Then just as the text dinged, I recognized a landmark and was back going in the right direction. 

From there I tried use my now infamous internal compass to navigate the way to my friend's house and became so turned around I had to pull over so I could input the address into Google Maps. Despite the fact that Google Maps was having a stroke this morning it should have been easy to just listen to the voice on the radio speakers pointing the way. Still, once more I had to stop and 're-calculate". Finally in a fit of disbelief I pulled over again and looked at the address I'd put into Google Maps - where is this place??? Then looked up at the house I had stopped in front of and... I was there - at my friend's house. Sheer luck, I think...

These were not hard things to do, not rocket surgery, as they say. I am not incompetent, never have been. I can do a lot of things pretty well, not that I'm an ace at anything in particular, but I can walk, talk, chew gum and subnet mask your IPv4 Class C network all at once. Or at least I could. Not so sure anymore. I've only been away from my career for 3 years and it's all gone. Ah, they say we remember what's important. Let's hope so.

This was not the first time when driving that I didn't know where I was, it worries me. I've always snapped back fairly quickly, so I've never panicked. This morning, I couldn't make sense of someplace familiar with a voice guiding me turn by turn to my destination. It was like one of those frustrating dreams where try as you might you never actually make it where you're going.