It hit me the other day during a meeting with my business manager, that I know a little bit about what it's like to have Alzheimer's disease.
That is because I have Statsheimer's disease.
This means that I can concentrate on a figure or a whole set of figures or a whole set of sets of figures on a big long spreadsheet, and master them: Add 'em, subtract 'em, multiply and divide 'em. Contemplate them. Appreciate them! Own their boring little bitch asses.
Until six days later, when I encounter them again.
"Hey, Murrman!" the statistics say, giving me a familiar little slap on the cheek.
"Heeeeeeeeeeeeyyyyyy … you!" I say, reddening, scrambling, stammering—knowing I'm supposed to know them, but not recognizing them from Pi. "Forgive me. Where do I know you from?"
Words, I can tell you where they were on the page when I read them in high school. "What do people plan?" said Daisy Buchanan near the bottom of a left-hand page in my Scribner paperback edition of The Great Gatsby.
But was it a $30,000 profit we made last year, or $300,000? I knew it yesterday, before it beaded on my brain, and ran out my ears.
Statsheimer's. I think I've suffered from it all my life, however many years that's been.
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