Outside the Box

I sometimes wonder if I was born with a form of dementia.

I generally call it a short-circuit in my brain, which sometimes behaves almost like an out-of-body experience.

This sort of thing has been happening all of my life, and is not simply something that started after age 50. In fact, it hasn’t happened much at all since age 50.

I don’t know if it happened before I started school. The first memory I have of it was when I was in third grade. It was the first week of school. I know this because we were still in regular clothes, and hadn’t started wearing our uniforms yet.

In those days, girls’ dresses usually had sashes. As an eight-year-old, I couldn’t manage to tie the sash behind my back, although I could button, zip and tie shoe laces, all in front of me.

It was the end of the day, while we were waiting for our bus. I had asked one of my friends if she would tie my sash. My recollection of what happened was that I stood there quietly while she tied it, and that was the end of it. Well, she had said something funny, and I giggled.

However, the teacher, who had been out in the hall, suddenly dashed into the classroom wanting to know who had screamed. I thought she was crazy. No one had screamed. There was a little quiet talking, but certainly no screaming.

I know I was confused. My friend immediately looked at me and said quietly, “You did.”

I had not! When no-one said anything, she went around the class asking each person if they had done it. Everyone said no, and my friend kept saying over and over – quietly – “You did.”

I was the last one questioned, and when she asked, figuring my friend knew something I didn’t, I said that I did it. Because I hadn’t admitted it immediately – or perhaps because it had happened at all – I was given a punishment of having to write a 100-word apology.

When I got home, I explained to my mother what I knew of the situation, and what my friend had told me. Of course, she would not contradict the teacher or even write a note saying that I had no memory of the incident whatever.

What I should have done, except that, at eight, I didn’t have the words, was write my side of the story, and how I had no idea what she was talking about. At the end, I could have apologized for any inconvenience I might have caused.

But, as I said, I didn’t have the words. Instead, I wrote an apology that basically used the word very – misspelled as verry, I do recall that much –to make up about 90 of the words in the apology. And I’m sure it was tossed in the rubbish as soon as my back was turned.

The second time happened was when I was about 10. I was visiting relatives for a week. Apparently, when my aunt was out getting a few things for dinner, my cousin fell off one of those baby sit-on-and-scoot toys. Apparently, too, I told my aunt this when she returned home a few minutes later.

Nothing was made of the incident, since there was no blood, bruising or tears involved.

Later that night, apparently, my aunt thought something wasn’t quite right with my cousin. She asked me about him falling. I had no idea what she was talking about. I had no recollection of him falling or even of telling her about it. I tried to pull the memory of it, but it was like trying to retrieve a parsley flake from molasses. All I could do was shrug and say I didn’t know.

I don’t think I have had any other episodes quite like that since.

There have been times when I was so involved in the pretend life I lived inside my head that I was out of touch with what was going on in front of me in the real world. 

Who I was in my head was never who I had to remember to be in real life. So there were times when I told people my name was David Michael instead of Cathy. That usually got strange looks. I’d laugh and say I was just kidding to cover my tracks. But anyone who really knew me as a child knew that I always pretended to be a boy named David Michael.

The other form this has taken started when I was in high school, and has also only happened a couple of times that I recall.

The first time was in Chemistry class. I really wanted to like Chemistry. I had visions of being the mad scientist. But my Chemistry teacher happened to be a warm body with a science degree, and that degree was in Biology. She could only explain the work in the exact words that were in the book. I seem to be a "textbook dyslexic," and so couldn’t make sense of what I was reading in the textbook (or any textbook, really).

I wasn’t the only one who didn’t understand what she was teaching. Since our class was first track –what would now be called advanced placement – it was unusual for the majority of the class to fail to understand content or, as it turned out, to fail the first major exam.

Our intrepid teacher continued to repeat the same words in the same order to be met with the same lack of understanding from the class.

Finally, I raised my hand and said, “Do you mean…” and proceeded to spend five minutes explaining, in completely different words, the points she had been trying in vain to give us. It was a great explanation. All around me I heard, “Oh, now I get it!” along with the oohs and aahs of understanding. It was perhaps my best performance ever. 

Unfortunately, I have no idea what I said. I couldn’t even hear what I was explaining. It was as if some pixie sitting on top of my head was explaining Chemistry in a foreign language for all I got out of it.

The teacher’s eyes lit up. I never saw her so happy ever again. “Yes, yes, that’s it!” she said.

“I don’t understand that,” I replied, sincerely.

She immediately became extremely angry with me, and told the girl in front of me to explain to me what I had just said. Apparently, her explanation wasn’t as good as mine had been, and I never did understand.

And from that moment, that teacher never gave me credit for any intelligence whatever. I suppose I was lucky she didn’t send me to the principal for insolence.

The only other incident like that that I can recall happened when I was in my 20s. A friend was trying to explain to me how electricity works. I still have no idea.

After he spent about half an hour explaining it to me, I explained it back to him using completely different words, giving him an accurate accounting of the principles of electricity. It sounded very much like I knew what he was talking about.

But again, what was coming out of my mouth had no attachment to my conscious brain. I can’t access the portion of my brain that knows this stuff.

When I finished, he seemed happy that I understood. Until I told him that made no sense to me whatever.

I know he had used an analogy about electrons moving through a wire like water runs through a pipe. And at least he got a good laugh – and has never let me live it down – when I picked up a piece of wire, closed one eye, and looked at the end of it.

“Where’s the hole?” I asked.

No, I had no idea what he was talking about.

I know I’m not stupid. I know these things must be in there somewhere, but there’s no key to the door they’re locked behind.

The only other thing that comes close is when someone asks if I have an idea of how to do something to help one of the students I work with. Without even being aware that I’ve thought of something, I’ll give them a suggestion that usually causes their jaw to drop because they never would have thought of it.

I just shrug and say, “I kind of tend to think a little outside the box.”