138. Shillings and Bananas

138. "I'm Going Slightly Mad" by Queen

Things are more than a little off kilter with this song, which is what makes it so good. The lyrics are tragic yet funny. The melody is catchy yet creepy. The man in the song knows he's going mad, but only slightly mad. It's been in the works for a long time, and now it's finally happened. He's now crazy enough for it to be disturbing to himself and others, but not so much that he's forgot his manners. He still asks how you're doing.




This song taps into yet another one of my fears--losing my mind to dementia. I developed this fear in college because of two different experiences.

First, I took an abnormal psych class that taught me that no matter how strange, how disgusting, or how perverted any behavior might be, there's somebody out there that gets off on it. After Pete Welches slide show of sexual deviance, I came to the conclusion that people are capable of pretty much anything.

Second, I briefly had a job working as an activities assistant in a nursing home, where I got to see first hand the many different types of crazy that hits people as they grow old. This fear has grown in the last year--not because I turned 50, but because of what has happened to my brain--I've started to forget basic words and my ability to remember what has happened in the recent past is getting worse and worse. Last month, my boss asked me what I did over the weekend, and for the life of me I couldn't remember what I'd done on Saturday. And I'm losing vocabulary at an every increasing pace.Yesterday, I forgot the word--and I kid you not--"bedspread." I had to Google "bedcover" to remember what to call that thing is on the top of my bed that I sleep under every night.

I don't know if this is the usual kind of memory problems that fifty year old men get, or if it all might be early signs of a long descent into dementia. All I know is that my brain does not work as well as it used to, which is a bit frightening considering that if my memory is correct, my noggin never worked all that well in the first place.

And there you have it.