Good God, let a spatula never again be wedged into a hole where a speculum might go.
shudders and limps off
You know what’s even more annoying? Not being able to remember the word that means “not being able to think of a word.” Damn. It’s logo something.
Lethologica!
Yes I do and good lord, it is getting worse as I get older. The other day I had trouble thinking of the word Champagne and the best I could come up with was “wine with bubbles.” A friend of mine pointed out that there is supposedly a link between nutrisweet and short term memory loss and since I used to drink a lot of diet cola. So now we refer to such times as nutrisweet moments.
Yep. Hate it. But when it happens, I can always remember the word “aphasia.”
One time I asked for a baked potato at a restaurant. Not being able to remember the word potato, I asked for “the brown thing shaped like a canoe with white fluffy stuff inside.” My parents had to translate.
One time I forgot my ID number when filling out an application. I kept coming up with other strings of numbers instead of the one I needed. I had a magic square sequence stuck in the slot for the ID number and it wasn’t coming out.
AARG.
Does that lexo… lethologica thing count if it’s numbers you can’t remember?
It’s for this reason that conversations with my mother can be so infuriating.
“Well, why don’t you get the thing and put it in the whatever along with the other stuff. Then we can, y’know…” :rolleyes:
Letharithmia? On second thought, nah, that sounds like a weird medical condition.
Hear, hear! In fact, not too long ago, upside down mom wanted to ask me to turn on the amplifier that goes to the TV antenna. She said, “hit the thing.” So I looked up and reached out to the first thing I saw - the corner of a cabinet unit - and gave it a good swat. :rolleyes: 
How common is this syndrome? I often forget perfectly normal words, and have to fall back to discribing the thing I want to say. Also I often know the first letter or two of the word as others have mentioned. This leads me to wonder if there is any relation between this and stuttering which also seems to be related to the first few letters of a word and difficulty in completion of that word?
You bastard. You’re one of my “friends”, aren’t you? Probably the same one who made so many helpful suggestions when I was trying to come up with genealogical and came out with gynecological this morning. :o
Heh. Happens all the time. Reminds me of the time I tried to ask my sister to get a piece of paper out of the glove box, and I referred to it as the fridge. Or any other time where I just stop because I can’t remember the word (usually simple stuff like “paper,” “door,” and the like).
Sometimes I also replace one word with a completely unrelated one, and don’t notice it until someone else points it out.
I’m afraid of what will happen when I get older. :eek:
Heh. My friends and I used to do that in high school. Caused us endless minutes of amusement. We’d reel them off rapid-fire: “Tennis shoe, wombat, hedgehog, wingnut…” For some reason (probably because we were dorky high school students), one of the words was always “wombat”.
It stopped being fun the day the word the person was looking for actually was “wombat”.
I do this all the time. So often, in fact, that I have wondered if it was a disorder. I also stutter, so maybe there is a connection, Bippy.
Like the other day, I was saying
“I didn’t answer the phone, because I was too busy playing the…the…the guh…the DAMMIT!” and my boyfriend didn’t supply me with the word ‘Playstation’ until I did my hands like I was using a controller.
I’ll also go through sorta-kinda-but-not-really related words until I finally come up with the right one.
That stuttering thing is interesting, though. Now I am off to do some er…ummm…the thing - research!
Requisite Simpsons’ quote:
“Let’s go back to that…building…thingy…where our beds and TV…is.”
BTW, did you derive your username from Blade Runner?
Yup. Specifically, there’s a Paul Oakenfold mix of Vangelis’ *Tears in Rain * on the Perfecto Presents: Another World double album. At the end is Roy’s monologue, and the music with the lines makes the ‘time…like…tears’ part stand out more.
Ha! Just wait until you are an old…uh…flatulance like me. It will get worst ya know.
But the strangest part of this is that I remember the word at some fart inappropriate time later.
Sheesh!
I actually had to IM a friend the other day to come up with the word “vicarious.” Ugh.
When asphasia hits me unexpectately, I find myself almost going into Sign Language/Charades. Because when That part of the brain malfuctions, This part of the brain ( the hands ) can get the word out through wild gesticulations. YOu should see the looks I get from those who are uninitiated to this.
Me: Gesturing an invisible TV/open a book/movie
Friend: It’s a TV, book and a movie!
Me: :::* doing wild gestures, one that looks like a bloated mime having a heart attack while shouting upwards at something:::::
Friend: Marlon Brando!..Godfather! No…wait…you would have collapsed on the ground…On the Waterfront!..
…the cottage…My Parents cottage! Yes, they still have it.
Me: YESSSSS!
Charading animals is hard, vegetables are the worst.
I see people with aphasia all the time. Indeed, my own dad suffered with it towards the end.
I am hijacking this thread to note, again, that I don’t think there’s a worse fate, especially for someone whose whole life has revolved around speaking, reading, etc., and who secretly (or not-so-secretly) prides him/herself on being articulate. Please God, spare me. Please.
Ah, I did this just the other day. Here is how I attempted to describe my missing word:
“Um, it’s like people … together … but not moving … like a group of people … who are looking a certain way on purpose … you know, looking that way together but not moving.” (Because repetition is always a good way of clarifying what you are trying to say.)
The word I was looking for was “tableaux.” More precisely, I was trying to convey tableaux vivant. How can you describe that?