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Do you
commonly find yourself calling your children by the wrong
name, and feel like kicking yourself for spending so much
time selecting just the right name for each child?
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Do you find
yourself saying to your child, "Sure, I know where you left
your cookie." It's on the long white horizontal surface in
the kitchen... you know, the one with the thing we cook with
on one end and the thing we put stuff into keep it cold on
the other end? Um... there's a sink in it?"
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Do you tell
people on the phone that you'll be happy to take a message,
just as soon as you find a "message-writing-down
thingamabob?"
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In fact, do
all the nouns in your vocabulary, nouns which have been your
friends and companions since you were two years old,
suddenly become "thingies" when you are under pressure? You
may be suffering from deficient noun disease.
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Deficient
noun disease, or DND, is a common affliction among mothers
of small children (older children too). While not a
dangerous illness, DND is an exasperating and frustrating
one which increases in severity in direct proportion to the
number of children in the household.
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Common
symptoms of DND include the following: Calling children by
each other's names, forgetting the proper names for common
household objects, and casually referring to other adults
not as "John and Jane" but as "those people with the pool
who barbecue every Friday." Another common symptom is the
frequent use of the WRONG noun in a given situation, rather
like mild aphasia. Someone with this particular type of DND
might say, "Put your plate on the stove...I mean on the
counter... I mean ON THE TABLE!"
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A less
common symptom displayed by some DND sufferers is an ailment
also referred to as the "Crossword" Syndrome. With this
particular type of DND-related illness, the affected person
might declare, "Oh, yes, I know her name. Let's see... it
starts with an "S", has five letters...."
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DND,
although virtually untreatable and incurable, can still be
endured with a minimum of pain and embarrassment if the
afflicted person makes use of the following handy coping
mechanisms:
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One method
of coping with the disease involves the clever use of
nicknames, which can easily apply to any individual in the
family, like "Dear" or "Sweetheart". This method breaks down
when the DND sufferer is faced with the necessity of
differentiating between individuals, or when she is talking
to several people at one time, so the use of group
nicknames, like referring to everyone in the room as
"Y'all", a common Southern coping mechanism, is recommended.
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Another
good way to conceal DND from your friends and family members
is to develop the habit of pausing in your sentences when
reaching a crucial noun. If the pause is long enough, the
other individual will attempt to guess the noun for you, and
you need only respond in the affirmative when the correct
noun is reached. Although this method may take time, it
certainly adds suspense to an otherwise ordinary
conversation.
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The
information available on DND is still patchy and incomplete,
due to the unnecessary shame felt by many mothers who do not
realize that this illness is widespread and quite common.
Very few mothers are able to call their children by name,
and it is difficult for them to believe that the time
invested in picking out those names was, to put it bluntly,
wasted. When education has removed the stigma from the minds
of all women, this disease might very well be shown to be
the most common affliction in human history.
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The cause
of DND is not yet known; some scientists believe that using
a word over 100,000 times in the course of a lifetime may
simply fade that word from long-term memory; mothers simply
reach the lifetime limit earlier because they must repeat
themselves so often. Other scientists hold up the two-year
old child as proof positive that the repetition of a word
more than 100,000 times (in this case, the word Mommy) does
not cause selective noun amnesia.
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Although
modern science may never be able to cure DND or discover
what exactly causes it, we as mothers and fellow sufferers
can still help one another to recognize the illness and
learn to live in harmony with it. The next time you hear
yourself shouting, "CLAUDIA-CODY-BETSY-LOGAN-JILL .... YOU
KNOW WHO YOU ARE! GET IN HERE!", you can comfort
yourself with the knowledge that mothers all over the world
are doing the same thing.
