I hate when I can’t think of the correct word to name something

Jan. 23, 2021 (Chapter 12 Navigating Relationships while Living with a Memory Impairment in my book)

Yesterday I was babysitting my three young granddaughters. The youngest one was crawling around and she found something on the wall, so she decided to play with it. Her twin sisters were napping. When they got up from their nap, I told them about their baby sister playing with a “spring” while crawling on the floor. I showed them where it was. Then I remembered seeing some cute videos online of dogs playing with these springs. I decided to find some videos online using my cell phone. I showed them to the twins and they really liked them. On one of the videos, it was titled “puppies playing with door stop.” Now I realized that I hadn’t used the correct word, so I told my granddaughters that it was a door stop. I have seen these before and I have heard that word also. For some reason, I couldn’t remember that it was called a door stop.

Thank goodness that later when I told my daughter what my granddaughter was playing with that, I didn’t call it a “spring”. I can only imagine the comment that she would have made if I did. If she only knew how hurtful her comments are to me when she says them! I think that if I hadn’t shown my twin granddaughters the video of the puppies playing with the door stop, I would have told my daughter that it was a spring, not knowing that I was calling it the wrong word. It wasn’t until I saw the title on the video that I realized that I called it the wrong word.

I hate when this happens and how this memory impairment makes me feel about myself. I know that I’m not stupid but sometimes living with mild cognitive impairment makes me feel that way. In reality, this is not my fault. There is nothing that I can do to prevent this from happening. I just try to do my best and that is all that I can do.