Lightbulb. Or is it light bulb? You’d think a metaphorical one would go off over my head when it comes to remembering if this is one word or two. No matter, back I go to Merriam-webster.com to once again look it up.
I know that I am a bear of little brain, but it’s particularly vexing that there are some words that never seem to find a place in what little brain I have so that I can remember if they’re one word, two words, or hyphenated. Top offenders are words such as panty hose, place mat, seat belt, town house, and soul mate; all seem like they’re begging to be one word, but they’re not—yet, anyway—while backseat, willpower, and chickpeas are and still look strange to me.
There’s little logic to the process: we have cellblock, but cell phone; cleanup, pickup, backup, hookup, even giddyup, but close-up, dress-up, and cover-up, (all nouns); collarbone and breastbone but shoulder blades; dish towel but dishrag; lipstick but lip gloss and lip liner; hair band but headband; icebreaker, ice pack, and ice-skating. I double-dare you to accept my double dare to x-ray yourself and then give me the X-rays. In-box and out-box are both hyphenated, but while I am now online writing this post, I shall soon go off-line and gain a hyphen in the process.
And don’t get me started on the coffee and tea words: coffee cup, coffee table, and coffee shop but coffeemaker and coffeehouse; teahouse, teacup, teapot, and teakettle but tea bag, tea table, and tea party.
Anyway, lightbulb, lightbulb, I shan’t forget it again…sort of like Alice remembering her own name. Here’s a picture of her in the forest where everyone who passes through forgets their names and identities, hence the shy fawn walking with her:
Which brings me to:
I just read a remarkable book, Still Alice by Lisa Genova. I wonder if the author had the above Alice’s experience in mind when she wrote this incredible book about a woman’s journey with early-onset Alzheimer’s disease. The ending is more rosy than I expect it is for most patients, but it’s a book you can’t put down and that will stick with you, a must for anyone who enjoyed Oliver Sacks’s The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat.
I’ve always said that it will be very hard for anyone to tell if I ever get Alzheimer’s. I get lost stepping out of a subway station and lose things all the time, would lose my own head if it wasn’t firmly attached. Okay, I admit it does float around a little… In fact, I’ve had the very curious experience lately of misplacing and searching for things, and then finding them put away in exactly the sort of place an organized person would have put them.
For instance, I found my CVS card in a little box with my other frequent shopper cards that can’t all fit into my wallet (damn these stupid cards, anyway), not thrown in my handbag or sitting in the dryer after being stuck in my jeans pocket and surviving a trip through both washer and dryer, and a referral from my doctor was filed with my medical stuff rather than buried in the mound where papers go to die on my desk/night table/top of file cabinet.
Maybe I have a sort of reverse Alzheimer’s, in which I start to actually be organized? And in the process, will I lose my current self who can’t find things or get anywhere on time because I’m thinking about irrelevant ephemera and writing about lightbulbs and hyphens?
