Larry David Moments in Dementia: Curb Your Enthusiasm
By Greg O’Brien
“At first, I didn't realize it was gonna be a character. I just thought I was gonna be doing me.”
—Larry David
In my on-going dementia, I’ve become more Larry David-like. He’s a personal hero to me.
Larry David is a genius; I’m just a dumbass with Alzheimer’s. But David says things in his persona that we all, in good health, want to say, fantasize about saying—up front, no filter, balls out, no fear. Just say’in…Davis is an icon to me, an uplifting role model in my dementia descent, a guy rope on this journey. God bless you, Larry. We all need to take a page from him.
Not long ago, neurons in my head misfired again in public; this time at Boston’s Logan Airport on a trip to Los Angeles with my wife— blanks due mostly to the shrill noise and seizing confusion of flying. I wasn’t acting “first classy,” and was suffering from the isolation of feeling somewhat useless (as I often do now). There was a time when airlines actually offered customer service: you go to the counter, flash a license, drop off a bag, then head to the gate, maybe with some extra time for coffee and a bagel.
No longer.
The ticket counters now are flush with kiosks that look like the George Lucas robot R2-D2. Out of body overwhelmed, I felt like I needed access to the nuclear code just to get a boarding pass. I used to be the guy—you know, the guy, the husband, the father, the guy who fixed things. I wanted to be the guy! Now I was reduced to an agitated state of disarray, no longer the star quarterback of the family. An Irish lug, I always wanted to be the guy, the one who fixed thing, the one in charge. Not now. That role has now fallen to my wife, Mary Catherine, whom I affectionately call the “Warden.” Don’t try this moniker as home.
“It’s broken,” I yelled at her, as she fidgeted with R2-D2 to get the boarding pass and bag tags. That’s all I could think to say to reassert that I was still in charge. But that train, to mix a metaphor, had left the station.
“See, it’s broken,” I yelled again, as the brain cells short-circuited.
At airports now, one is supposed to have their quiet voice. I was raising my voice like a wave about to crash on the shoreline.
“No, it’s not,” Mary Catherine shot back, clearly stressed that I was in a launch countdown, as she tried frantically to engage R2-D2.
“The damn thing is broken!” I replied in a voice that was attracting attention of other travelers and nearby TSA.
Within seconds, a stern, stout woman approached me.
“What’s wrong,” she quipped, attempting to back me down. Don’t go there, I thought!
“It’s broken. The damn thing is just broken.”
“No, it’s not!”
“Yes, it is...”
Stretching the definition of polite, the woman bumped my wife
over to the right and worked the robot, her fingers hitting keystrokes like a master pianist.
Instantly, R2-D2 spit out boarding passes and bag tags.
With an air of smugness, she handed the bag tags to me.
In full gate confusion, I replied in a booming voice, “What the hell am I supposed to do with this?”
“You PUT them on your bags,” the woman said in a voice that drew out that second word with the greatest of sarcasm.
Challenged and not to be outdone, I stepped toward the woman, looked her directly in her eyes, violating the private zone space, and said with annunciation:“Well, am I supposed to fly the FUCKING plane, too?”
Holy shit. Alarms were going off. Passengers were glued to the confrontation. Other associates assembled like the posse. No Fly List, I was thinking. No Fly List...
My wife, the “warden” stepped in. She was the guy now—you know, the guy. Horrified at what had just happened and wondering how much longer she could absorb such invectives, as common with me now as daylight, she explained to the woman that I have medical issues that provoke the carpet bombing of F-bombs—in the moment, the only way I can articulate the pain and fear of a light going off in my head.
While all was not likely forgiven, we were allowed to proceed to the gate.
“You need to watch your husband closely,” the woman told Mary Catherine. “He should be on a pitch count.”
The flight home from L.A. was equally eventful. And I looked to find the humor in it.
In addition to other progressing symptoms, I have lost continence, to the point where I never wear light pants out of embarrassment. The brain is not sending signals that it is time to go to the bathroom, explosions of a different significance.
*******
Several hours in the air on the flight back to Boston, somewhere over Chicago, my wife turned to me and in the tone of a disciplining mother at the end of her tether, commanded: “GO TO THE BATHROOM.”
Childlike, I replied in a four-year-old tone, “NO!”
“Gooooo to the bathroom!” she said.
“No,” I said abruptly, like the little boy I am not, attracting the glances of passengers around us.
“Go to the bathroom or you’ll pee in your pants,” she replied. More eyeballs.
“I can’t,” I said. “The flight attendant’s cart is blocking the back of the plane.”
“Then go to the bathroom up in First Class!”
Mary Catherine was now on verge of an explosion herself.
“No way,” I said. “Going through the curtain that separates us from first class is like going through the veil in the ancient Jewish temple into the Holy of Holies. I’ll get struck by lightning.”
Passengers in the four rows ahead and behind me now put down their laptops, yanked off ear phones to channel into this conversation.
“Go to the bathroom,” she insisted.
I finally obliged and with great care stepped through the curtain that separates the privileged from the holy unwashed.
“I have to use the bathroom,” I said sheepishly, as confusion swayed. “I know I’m not supposed to be here, but it’s an emergency. Can I take a pee?”
The flight attendant sighs, rolls her head like she was in a Pilates class, then said, “Ok, Just make it quick.”
“Where’s the bathroom?” I asked, now in full gait turmoil.
“Right behind you,” the woman said dismissively. Little did she know...
In a full gait of confusion, piercing shrieks were playing again in my head.
There was a door on the left and a door in the middle. I didn’t know which one to grab. I contemplated both. In my muddle, I visualized the old Monte Hall TV game show: Let’s Make a Deal.
“Do I take the door on the left or the door in the middle, the door on the left, or the door in the middle?” I mused.
I chose the door in the middle, and placed my hand on the knob. Bad choice. The CAPTAIN’S DOOR!
Holy shit! More trouble. Fuck!
Reading the horror in my face, and realizing brain cells weren’t firing, the flight attendant, like a master drill sergeant, directed me to the door on the left, then marched me back to my seat.
“Please sit,” the woman said sternly, walking away. “And don’t get up again! Never again!”
Mary Catherine looked up in a Pilates head roll herself. “Okay, what the hell did you do now?” she asked. Passengers tuned in again. Clearly, must see TV!
“You almost got me thrown off the plane,” I whined. “WHAT DID YOU DO?” she said, raising her voice.
“I put my hand on the captain’s door,” I finally admitted.
“You what?”
“I put my hand on the captain’s door!”
There was a collective gasp from rows 8-12.
“Okay, that’s it!” Mary Catherine replied. “From now on, pee in your pants...”
So I did…
Good news was that I was back in my seat, no flight marshal had cuffed me, and the plane sped to Boston lickety-split.
Such unraveling is occurring more and more now. At times, it’s hard to find the humor in it.
Sleeping on the couch the other night, having been anaesthetized by the push and pull of CNN and Fox News coverage of a world gone nutty, I awoke to a hallucination on the edge of an oak coffee table next to the couch. There I saw a small demonic, green creature taunting me. Fully awake, my instinct was to swipe at the demon and it would go away, as hallucinations have in the past. The demon remained, and the taunts got louder. I swiped again, then again. The apparition lingered.
At first, I was terrorized, then angered, so enraged that I lifted my right leg off the couch and crashed it down on the demon with such force that it splintered a quarter-inch glass covering on the table. The force of the loud crash cut through a pair of thick jeans and broke the skin just above my ankle. There was no demon, only my hallucination, and a humiliating explanation to my wife the following morning on why the glass was shattered. Bad news any way you slice it. That Sunday morning, I picked up the pieces of the broken glass, took them to the town dump, and tossed them into the recycling bin.
The thought crossed my mind of jumping in myself.
Did I tell you that I miss Larry David…