The Hilarity of Terrible Things

A coworker of mine recently had a seizure. Frightening, tragic, and so on, of course, but like all tragedies, this one has its humorous upside. The medication she's on to prevent future seizures has weakened her equilibrium and made swiss cheese of her memory. The equilibrium thing isn't that funny; I tend not to laugh when people fall down, and she hasn't fallen down, which is good. The memory thing, though, is great. She occasionally can't remember words for things, like while we were talking, she didn't know the word for the thing that goes over the mattress on your bed ("sheets"), so I got to play a little guessing game. Quite amusing, and not entirely at her expense. She laughed too.

Those of you that know me well, which is pretty much all of you, know that I have an awful memory as well. This made it especially fun for me. There was one point when, in mid-conversation, she totally forgot what she was talking about. I thought she was joking, so I laughed. Then I realized she actually forgot. Between laughter and realization, I of course forgot what we were talking about as well. So we laughed.

You may not think this is funny because you remember stuff. But if you ever become an Alzheimer's patient, I hope that you understand the humor in not being able to remember anything that's happened in the past five minutes.