For the first few days I was back from Ecuador, I kept waking up thinking I was in Quito. That’s really interesting, because I’ve never ever done that before in my life. My mom would always worry about me waking up and freaking out, not knowing where I was if I stayed at a friend’s house or my grandparents’ or my aunt’s. But never in my life have I woken up and wondered where I was, even for a second, until this August 8.
In fact, I don’t think I stopped waking up thinking I was in Quito until the pulled muscle/nonfuncioning lungs incident of August 22, when I’d instead wake up and think “do my lungs work today?” (for days, the answer was usually “not quite”).
I’ve also been really stuck on cars for the last week. My mom got a new car, so now I’m driving hers and Colin’s got mine. Not only do I walk out into the garage in the morning and back in at night and wonder “whose car is this?!” every single day, I actually looked out the front window at work yesterday and thought “what’s my mom doing here?”
Final example: my clock. Long story short, my furniture was rearranged while I was gone and my clock is now on the left, rather than the right of my bed. Not only is it a habit for me to look to the right to see what time it is how late I am each morning, but it’s a strong one. I ran through every room I’ve ever been in since I’ve had a clock in my room. Anderson, Lawrenceville, Clarksdale, Elizabeth City, Greensboro, back to Elizabeth City, Quito. My clock has always been to my right. I laugh at myself because I feel like it’s a gigantic effort to flip over and look at where my clock is now, but no wonder when it’s not in the same place it’s been for just shy of the past two decades. (I can remember two decades. That’s scary.)
I’d like to think I’m a pretty smart guy and that I adapt to new situations quickly. If you ask me what town I’m in or what I’m driving or even where my clock is right now, I’ll spit out the correct answer. But even so, it doesn’t take a huge change in my immediate environment to just totally blow my mind when actually confronted with that situation. It’s ingrained in my mind to look a certain direction when I wake up or seek out a certain car in the parking lot.
The point of this is I hope I break some of these soon. Otherwise the guy at COA that owns the remaining red Maxima will wonder why I keep trying to get in his car.
