THIS IS YOUR BRAIN, THIS IS YOUR BRAIN IN THE TWILIGHT ZONE

I often wonder how many other people have the 40-degree thing.  It isn't something you would typically bring up in conversation, polite or otherwise.  In fact, I think you could know someone for years and never talk about the 40-degree thing.  But it would be reassuring to know there are others out there.  The thing is, it can strike at any time, without warning and you just wish that instead of trying to act normal when it happens you could say to whoever you're around "Excuse me just a minute, will you?  I have the 40-degree thing going on."  But maybe there are only a select few who experience this.  I actually wouldn't mind if I never had it again.  It's not what I'd call pleasant.

The 40-degree thing isn't new, but the name is, kind of.  My friend, who I'll call Gregg because that's his name (until he actually reads this blog and makes me change it to something else), was living in the Old Saybrook/Westbrook, Connecticut area and commuting daily to Fairfield County to work.  That is a long commute, a good hour and a half one way.  Sometimes, because he had Lyme Disease sapping his strength at the time, Gregg would get so fatigued he'd have to pull over and rest for a bit with a cup of Macdonald's coffee (not bad, but no Newman's Own).

There were other stress factors involved including care of a daughter who was, as Gregg put it, "quite a handful."  During one of his involuntary pit stops, Gregg pulled into a rest area with a digital thermometer on one of the buildings.  Apparently, half asleep and nerved up, Gregg looked up at the thermometer and it said forty-something, which immediately set Gregg's head spinning.  For a moment, it all seemed unreal.  Was it, in fact, forty-something degrees out?  It didn't strike Gregg right.  Did forty degrees even exist?

Before you judge this experience, consider this: have you ever written a word, even an item on a shopping list, say, and although you know you spelled it correctly, it just doesn't look right?  Please tell me you have.  Or had a conversation with someone, used a word and then been unable to get that word out of your head because it seems for all the world crazy and wrong?  What it is, I believe, is a cross between deja vu and an anxiety attack.  Nothing stupendous need happen; could be you just think of your age, or what month this is, or somebody who's dead and it just doesn't - for a moment - seem real.  If you try and shake yourself out of it you can make it worse.  But while you're standing there, often in the midst of a crowd in a public place, everything sort of "shifts."  People's voices sound odd, your head gets light and you think there is no way, shape or form that whatever's going on is going on.  Like forty degrees.

It's a hassle, really.  A pure hassle.  When it's over, and it can last anywhere from a fleeting second to an agonizing minute or more, you are just so relieved.  You want to shake all over like a dog, really.  Shake it off, get back to what is real because this unreal feeling is so foreign it borders on scary.  The only good thing about it is that unlike when you catch a pot paranoia, it passes pretty quickly.

And thanks to my friend Gregg, we have a term for it now.  And though I don't dwell on it, I do, from time to time, wonder who else has the forty-degree thing.  And for that matter, why?  And...well, the whole thing just makes me tired.  Meanwhile, if you have your own occasional forty-degree thing going on, give yourself a break.  You're not alone.  Don't sweat it.  After all, maybe you yourself don't exist.  Does that word "don't" look right to you?

There were other stress factors involved including care of a daughter who was, as Gregg put it politely, "quite a handful."  During one of his involuntary pit stops, Gregg pulled into a rest area with a digital thermometer on one of the buildings.  Apparently, half asleep and nerved up, Gregg looked up at the temperature and it said forty-something, which immediately sent Gregg's head spinning.  For a moment, it all seemed unreal.  Was it, in fact, forty-something degrees out?  It didn't strike Gregg right.  Does forty degrees even exist?

Before you judge this experience, consider this: have you ever written a word, even an item on a shopping list, say, and although you know you spelled it correctly, it just doesn't look right?  Please tell me you have.  Or had a conversation with someone, used a word and then been unable to get that word out of your head because it seems for all the world crazy and wrong?  What it is, I believe, is a cross between deja vu and an anxiety attack.  Nothing stupendous need happen; could be you just think of your age, or what month this is, or somebody that's dead, and it just doesn't - for a moment - seem real.  If you try and shake yourself out of it you can make it worse.  But while you're standing there, often in the midst of a crowd in a public place, everything sort of "shifts."  People's voices sound odd, your head gets light and you think there is no way, shape or form that whatever's going on is going on.  Like forty degrees.

It's a hassle, really.  A pure hassle.  When it's over, and it can last anywhere from a fleeting second to an agonizing half a minute or more, you are just so relieved.  You want to shake all over like a dog, really.  Shake it off, get back to what is real because this unreal feeling is so foreign it borders on scary.  The only good thing about it is that unlike when you catch a pot paranoia, it passes pretty quickly.

And thanks to my friend Gregg, we have a term for it now.  And though I don't dwell on it, I do, from time to time, wonder who else has the forty-degree thing.  And for that matter, why?  And...well, the whole thing just makes me tired.  Meanwhile, if you have your own occasional forty-degree thing going on, give yourself a break.  You're not alone.  Don't sweat it.  After all, maybe you yourself don't exist.  Does that word "don't" look right to you?