Capes R Not Us.

I got a mini-startle as I drew back the shower curtain this morning thinking to step in. The scene resembled what you’d see on-set, just after Norman Bates had carted off Janet Leigh, shower curtain and all, with the following critical cast change: Janet’s role was being played by an alien with pale aqua blood.

Well, I was taking a shower anyway, so it wasn’t hard to clean up. But I will note that a full 33.9 fluid ounces of Target brand dandruff shampoo does make the shower floor a mite slippery. And it had spread quite nicely, dripping as it had from the higher of the two metal accoutrement baskets we have appended to the shower stall wall. Because it had been placed there improperly closed and upside down.

So one of the things we did today was buy Jeff some more shampoo. My goal was prevention. What kind of bottle would one either be most apt to close properly and/or least likely to replace upside down? Not a boxy cap of the type so common and popular for reasons I don’t quite grasp. But since I’ve been giving Jeff anti-flaky shampoo, that limited our options right off the bat, and a small bottle of Selsun Blue, with a normal sort of round cap, seemed the best bet. I even performed a small assessment right on the spot: “How,” (I said,) “would you place this bottle on the shelf? Like this? (upside down) or like this? (right-side up.)” “Like that, I guess,” replied Jeff, choosing correctly. And, in fact, it would take a bit of a balancing act to place it the other way.

It’s the kind of little accommodation I make daily. Another of today’s errands was a foray into Eastern Mountain Sports, in search of a light (but not too light) mens’ jacket. Here was my starting parameter: Can this be fastened without me there to do the zipper? There are ways. There might, for example, be auxiliary snaps, or, even better, velcro. But not, alas, in a jacket of the right weight. Yes for heavy coats, but jackets were stubbornly determined to exist only in zip format. So, on the fly, I came up with a new option: How about a half-zip? If the zipper-starter doesn’t need fiddling with, pulling the pull should be no problem. Such things, double alas, did not exist but in the lightest of fleeces. Something in-between was not to be had; not today anyway.

I’ll keep looking even though it is, in truth, something of an arbitrary goal. The thing is--even with velcro, snaps, or a half-zip--you’ve still got to put the jacket on properly in the first place.

Case in point--an anecdote from this very morning: Jeff headed for the stairs, post-elliptical trainer. “What are you after?” I asked. (Even though I knew the answer since he was wearing a t-shirt and had taken his button shirt off to exercise.) “A shirt,” he replied. “You left your shirt in the kitchen,” I said. “No,” said Jeff. “Not that shirt. That shirt is like a cape. It’s like a Superman cape. I can’t wear that shirt, I need a regular shirt.” Because I live here I knew what this meant. Because I’ve watched Jeff try to put on shirts. He must have tried to put it on (pick one) upside down, or armless, or head in the armhole, or without unbuttoning first. So I said, “let’s see,” and helped him thread his arms in one at a time. Then I started the buttons. He pulled the two sides of the lower placket apart a couple times as I buttoned downward, trying to demonstrate that this was a cape, not a shirt, but finally realized--with a sort of an I’ll be darned expression--that it was, in fact and when donned correctly, a shirt.

There are lots of things that continually surprise me about this brain dysfunction process. One is this: Why is there no sort of meta-analysis going on of the problems we encounter? Why would you not even think your wife asking whether it’s okay to put a shampoo bottle on a shelf upside down is weird? Or not think: wait...a shirt is never a cape. How does it make sense for me to think this is a cape?

But he doesn’t think this stuff. I guess it would be too multi-layered for an Alzheimer brain to take anything except at face value.

Now I’ll check REI online for a heavy-ish half-zip. I will not bother looking in the cape section, because I know we don’t want that.