My tongue was still swollen and I couldn’t speak. My diaper was wet and I wanted it changed as soon as possible. I tried to stand up in the crib and discovered that I was still unable to stand unassisted. My emotions overtook me and I began to cry in frustration.
Gina came in the room and changed me as soon as she heard me crying. Then she gave me a bottle of water to quench my thirst until it was time for breakfast. I could see that we were starting to fall into a morning routine, but there was nothing I could do to alter or modify my sister’s behavior. My inability to speak and my sister’s slow-wittedness ensured that I would be treated like a baby until I found a way to communicate my mental competence. I spent the day pretty much as I had spent the day before, sitting in the playpen while my sister kept house and only being taken out when it was necessary to change or feed me. Somehow during the night, I had progressed or more properly, regressed further into my infancy. My abilities in mathematics seemed to have disappeared in the night until I could no longer perform first year calculus in my head. The difference between sine and cosine seemed hazy to me and I could no longer remember how to get the tangent of an angle. If the trend continued, I wouldn’t be able to perform basic algebraic calculations the next day. I noticed that my vocabulary was beginning to slip as well. I kept finding myself mentally searching for words that I had known since high school. The concepts were there, it seemed like the words where on the tip of my tongue but I was not able to access them.