Aphasia

Dropped off daughter at a sleepover party, and Wife and I had a date. On the way to the movie, I forgot the word that means partial or total loss of the ability to articulate ideas or comprehend spoken or written language. I said to wife, “Come on, you know the word. You used to use it all the time.” She denied this, and we argued. However, my biorhythms were riding high, and I was sure we’d run into friends at the movie who would know the word. We didn’t. On the way home, we argued again. She was angry, believing that my obsessive search for the word was an attack on her inability to remember things. I was angry, certain that she had been coerced by the government or otherworldly agents to alter my perception of reality. What she did not know was that, in my devil brain, I had made a back-burner deal. If I could not recall the word before arriving home, something bad would happen. Minutes before turning onto our street, the word popped into my head. The agents had relented. This time.