Have you ever heard someone use the expression, "it's right there, on the tip of my tongue"? I think most people have heard or used that phrase before, but if you haven't it is just a simple way to convey that you either have a thought that you can't quite formulate, or that you are having a hard time coming up with the correct words to describe or explain something.
This kind of situation happens to me quite a bit, and often it feels as if someone is dangling a thought or phrase, the exact one that I am currently looking for, just out of my reach as if I were a circus animal and they wanted me to sit up and beg for an audience. But, what usually happens, is that the minute I stop trying so hard to pull the thought into my grasp, it will simply appear before me. All I have to do now is reach out and take it, although with an SCA, I will have to grasp at the thought a few times before I am actually able to rap my mind's clumsy and wooden fingers around it, and obtain a firm hold.
However, grasp it I finally do, and experience has shown me that once I have maintained a solid grip on a thought, I then need to clutch it in a stranglehold, and write it down as quickly as I can. Sometimes it feels as if I only have minutes before the thought will squirm itself out of my embrace, spring off the tip of my tongue where I originally found it, and slip off into the night never to be heard from, or seen again. Recently, however, I have been able to throttle a few thoughts about my personal experiences with dining-out into submission, and would like to share them with you.
When it comes to eating a meal in a restaurant, be it fine dining, casual, or fast-food, I have been pondering on the importance of the proper attire. I knew that there had to be a connection between the choice of color, and style, of clothing worn to eat out, and that of the restaurant that becomes the selected place to dine. But the thought kept eluding me, I knew it was there, but it continued to dangle and swing seductively just beyond my grasp.
Until, that is, the most recent time that I found myself having a meal in a restaurant. After looking at the carnage that I had left on the table, and the food that I had spilled on myself by the end of the meal, the thought finally edged close enough for me to grab. It finally dawned on me that I should be ordering my meal based completely, and solely on, the color of my clothing.
An example of this kind of system would be, to only order, say, the Guacamole Burger when I am wearing a green shirt. This way I can walk out of the establishment with my head held high, and not resembling someone who has just spent a month engaged in a high-intensity food fight. Of course, I could just always wear neutral colored clothing when eating out but this would mean that I would have to stick to water, and spilling this in my lap may lead others to land on undesirable conclusions once I stand up to try to exit the building.
Portion sizes, when this is an option, I have discovered to also be an important part, or consideration, when ordering a meal in a restaurant. If I am hungry, which just so happens to continue to occur quite regularly, then I find that I need to order enough so that food can be evenly distributed onto the table, floor, my clothing, and yet still provide enough to actually eat.
Besides obvious reasons, like age, I wouldn't order a kid's meal if I was actually planning on getting anything to eat, (I do however wish that they would include a cool toy with the larger orders....this seems like a discrimination to me, but that's a subject for a later time). Sometimes I've wondered if it wouldn't simply be a whole lot easier to order an empty plate, sit in the booth for twenty minutes, tip the waiter, and go home. Or maybe one of Willy Wonka's sticks of gum that offer a full coarse meal.
A close connection to the choice of the portion size, is the utensil selected. I will always choose the chopstick, as long as the chopstick is rounded at the end and can be used with one hand as a scoop, and.....well, pretty much resembles a spoon in every way. So, by this definition of the chopstick, I guess you could say that I always choose the spoon when given the option.
I do this for several reasons, one of which is because the spoon permits me to carry a larger payload to my mouth, allowing at the same time for a certain percentage of food to fall off on it's journey. Also because the fork has sharp prongs that become potential W.O.M.D's, or, Weapons Of My Destruction with each bite that I attempt to take.
I have also been known to fling fork fulls of food onto the floor, while attempting to cut it into mouth size portions. I apply so much pressure to cutting, that when the fork severs the piece that I am cutting, my hand doesn't stop and I launch the food into space. This would be a neat trick if it was intentional, like when someone throws food up in the air, and then catches it in their mouth. I could actually do this, if the object was to not catch the food in my mouth, but rather to hit myself in the eye, forehead, or throat.
When this cutting-and-flinging occurs at home my dogs are the only ones who benefit. This phenomenon also manifests itself when I try to scoop ice cream, only this is known as the scoop-and-toss. It's kind of the Ataxia version of a game I played as a kid with little square beanbags called Toss Across.
Eating is just one more of the areas that has been affected by the presence of Spinocerebellar Ataxia. But one in which, like everything else about this disease in my life, can be dealt with through a little creativity, imagination, humor, and a will not to give in or give up.
