Don’t you just hate it… when you have Parkinson’s… and you are very dyskinetic and you are walking down a hallway or in a small room and you bounce into walls like the old Atari game called PONG.  I do. When dyskinesia kicks in, and I am going down the hall at my house, my balance takes a holiday. I take a few steps and knock right into the wall. I bounce off it, and it sends me a few feet farther and then I knock into the other side of the wall.  This can keep happening until I either accept that I am now one with the wall or walk into an open space away from walls and furniture. 

Needless to say I don’t go in the kitchen when the stove is on and my dyskinesia is acting up. Otherwise I guess I would be playing Hot Potato.  Did Atari have a hot potato game?

Don’t you just hate it… when you have Parkinson’s… and you go into a public restroom and you try to put that “ass gasket” paper thing on the seat?  But it falls into the water, and now you have to get another one.  But your frustration causes your hands to shake more.  And you try to separate one out of the dispenser. So now you have three.  You peel one off.  No easy feat.  But you are left with two flapping in the breeze made by your shaking hands.  So you quickly shove the extras back in the dispenser.  Now while all this is going on you have ignored the fact that you really have to pee.  You unfold the liner,  and you struggle to rip the center piece out, get it on the seat again and when you do, the electric eye goes off and sucks it down the pipe and now you are starting all over again… I do.

Don’t you hate it… when you have Parkinson’s… when a doctor prescribes you a new medicine, vitamin or supplement, and when you get home and open the bottle the pills look like they are meant for a horse, to be more specific a Trojan Horse?  I do.  I have had trouble swallowing pills for many years now.  I even get some of my meds in liquid form because I know if I don’t, I will choke and someone is going to find me in a heap on the floor, with some behemoth pill lodged in my trachea. 

Don’t you hate it… when you have Parkinson’s… and you struggle to open a package of frozen vegetables?  I do. I just spent fifteen minutes trying to open a “resealable, easy-open” package of peas.  I have pulled on every tab I could find and tried tearing it open with my teeth. No luck. Aha!  An idea pops into my head.  I rummage through my junk drawer but I can’t find my scissors.  I start mumbling to myself something about a place for everything and everything in it’s place… when suddenly I hear a faint noise calling me from the other side of the kitchen.  I stop and turn slowly around. There, on the kitchen counter, is my knife set.  Now I admit I have been ignoring my knife set lately.  I don’t cook that much anymore and to protect my safety and the safety of others around me, I avoid sharp knives.  But I am frustrated and not thinking rationally now.  And besides, I could have sworn that I just saw one of the knives wink at me. (What am I saying, knives don’t wink.) I guess it glistened… Yeah, that’s right, it glistened.  (Can’t you just hear Jon Lovitz saying that line?) I feel as though I am being drawn to the other side of the kitchen.  To the knife block, to be exact.  I must resist!  I grab the bag of frozen peas and throw it down onto the counter. Nothing.  I do it again. Same result.  Ok, now I am past frustrated and just plain old pissed.  There the bag lies on the counter mocking me.  It thinks it has won.  Well, not so fast, Mr. Peabody!   I grab a paring knife, I hear strange music.  I begin to channel Janet Leigh (without the shower). I stab the bag numerous times… It lies there on the counter lifeless.  A rogue pea rolls out of one of the stab wounds I have made to the “resealable, easy-open” package.  I grab the bag and hold it over a pot of boiling water.  It rains frozen peas from all its stab wounds. They fall into the hot bubbling bath below.  Victory is mine!

But I am going to have to use duct tape to close the damn bag. And I am still finding rogue peas hiding in different places of my kitchen.