Stories of the Street - Seventeen

George has a word in his head and is planning to go to the library to check it out. Mary knows that he is on his way there and she has warned him that the library will not be open until 10 am but he still wanted to set off early.

He stops at the beginning of the street and starts his regular ritual of reading the shops. Some of the words are there, clearly understandable, not to be disputed and wholly familiar words - ones he can recognise and understand. George relishes these words and greets them as friends.

However, there are words that just won’t let him in. He struggles with them and wonders why they are so snobbish or stubborn. He has conquered the alphabet but still there are these words whose letters seem to disappear into themselves. As he watches them they dance around each other and evade his steady gaze while other words just contain unmitigated nonsense. In them there are no recognisable letters to start on or grab hold of.

With fierce determination we slowly walks the street looking in each window on his favourite side of the road. This one contains the bakers shop and two different types of grocers. There is a café with a short, simple menu in its window and some good advertisements, too.

All the way along he fixes first on those words he can handle and divides his time between the other sorts of difficult ones. He is convinced that he will walk down this road one day and everything will make sense to him.

At the end of the road he pulls the sheet of paper out of his pocket and looks at it. He holds the paper out, slightly in front of himself, checking that the big arrow is pointing away from himself. With the finger of his right hand he uses his index finger to point in the direction of the small arrow. That is his direction now. He only has a problem with directions on the way to the library and it is not a regular problem. It’s just that he sometimes forgets or looses track. Best to be sure.

Before turning the corner he repeats the ritual because he is not really sure, yet. He sort of lost focus as he was starting to put the paper away.

Satisfied that he is now going in the correct direction he walks purposefully on, thinking about this damn word he has in his head. When he gets to the library he will ask someone for their help as he looks it up in the big dictionary they have there.

He will ask if gorgeous starts with GO or GEO. It is a wonderful word and he knows that it means something good. He might use it when he gets home.

He checks his watch – thank goodness for digital watches! They are not perfect but the round ones with the big and small hands are impossible to interpret. He waits until he can recognise all of the numbers on the dial then he works methodically to calculate the time. 10:03. Good, the library will be open.

George, he keeps telling himself, you’re not stupid. It’s just that stupid thing; what’s it called now? That stupid thing that clotted his mind. Not a mind clot but something else.

As he climbs the steps to the library he remembers what the mind clotting problem is called. A stroke. That’s what it is.