Sundown

My name is Georgia and I took my new medicine just now, but I don't like it because it makes my head feel funny and I don't remember things like I used to. Being a teacher, my head was full of facts and figures that I taught my class, even my students' faces, and I don't want to lose that but I do when I take this medicine. Oh well. They say I'm getting older and older people tend to forget so try to prevent memory loss with a pill, and so that may be true, but why take it if I don't need it?

My teaching days were full of promise and pride, and I loved my job and my day and my students, who I called my kids. They came and went through my seventh-grade classroom. I saw some of them grow up from an awkward junior high student to a full-fledged young adult who went on to be something else. Sometimes a nurse or an office manager or a waitress, or a mechanic or a store manager or a car salesman. I knew I'd done my job when I'd get a note or call from one of them saying I influenced them or meant something to them, like that one girl, what's her name now, she went on to be a writer and her mother worked in that diner, my now I can't remember the name of that either and oh well, when we get older we tend to forget things, and maybe this new pill will help but I don't know, I used to know that girl's name like my own because I would tell her to keep writing because she had promise. I can just see her face in my mind but can't call up her name, but I don't guess it's that important now, maybe it'll come back to me. That diner was a place the kids gathered and ordered pop and chips from the owner, now what was his name again, something like Steve or Stan or I don't know, I forget. Now why isn't this pill working, didn't I take it? Where did I put the bottle? Who is this person opening the lid and handing me one when I could have sworn I just took it? Well, maybe it was yesterday I'm thinking about, or, wait, what was yesterday, Monday? Today feels like Monday. You ever notice how days have a certain feeling to them, like Saturday for example? It just feels different, like it's bright and shiny and oh if I could just find that bottle. Lady, did I take my new pill? Did I take it? Did you see me take it? Were you here when I did? Oh my I can't find anything now, where did it go, maybe rolled under the bed, are you my daughter, whose house am I in?

The end