5:45 AM, cup of freshly brewed coffee in hand, the cat wants out and so do I because there’s a high overcast of rows of little scudding clouds, banked up one after the other across the sky, all glowing bright golden, and I want to watch as they slowly fade.
Woke from a dream about all the things I remember, like the words and music to a thousand songs, old limericks, and this one that you should try on your friends, see how they do. I was 31 when it was run past me, I got it the first time. The Memory Test
The first line is “One hen”, and they repeat it after you. Then, “One hen, two ducks”, and they repeat it. There’s ten lines and with each one, they repeat the whole thing after you, from the start, after another line is added. One hen, two ducks, three squawking geese, four limerick oysters, five corpulent porpoises, six pairs of Don Alverzo’s tweezers, seven thousand Macedonians in full battle array, eight brass monkeys from the ancient, sacred crypts of Egypt, nine sympathetic, apathetic old men on roller skates with a profound propensity for procrastination and sloth, ten diabolical denizens of the deep who haul and stall and thrall around the quivy of the quo of the quay all at the same time.
Today, the grocery list is a different matter. Four, maybe five things and I might get home with all of them but more than that and I’d better have written it down.