Amnesiac

"This is it Mister. 3607 Woodwind Avenue." Apparently the Ethiopian who had ferried me from the physiotherapy center was a down on his luck race car driver. In under thirty minutes (Thats how long it takes the large hand on my wristwatch moves a semi circle, right?) I had been escorted from Downtown Chicago to my apartment in Wheeling.

I quietly surveyed the redbrick building he had pointed with the silver numbers barely clinging on to the door. "A total of 16" I whispered. Now why had I done that? Was I just numerically inclined? I was, I'd been told, an engineer at one point in my life. Or did the number sixteen have some sort of personal significance. It wasn't my birthday. That and my address I had discovered thanks to the driving license they had found on me. Maybe it was an anniversary? Which month? There are only 12. So I have an eight percent chance of guessing correctly. "Again! With the numbers!" This time the inner voice was the one playing devil's advocate.

"Hey Mr.Einstein" Njouba called out breaking my mathematical malaise. "You gonna get out?" he asked rhetorically. "Well actually...." I stopped mid sentence. I didn't need to correct him that my last name wasn't Einstein. He probably didn't care anyway. Why had he called me that, I wondered as I stepped out of the car after handing him his 80 dollars. Maybe Einstein was someone famous and I resembled him? Anyway I had bigger problems to face. Quite literally the large oak door to which those numbers totaling 16 had been so tenuously tethered stood before me. I fished out my set of keys. Six of them. A 17% chance of getting this right. Well one of them was obviously for a car. Improved odds - 20%. Three were two small to fit in the opening. Odds further improved to 50%. I am beginning to like this skill. I tried the first one and met resistance when I turned right. It was only worse when I changed directions. As I removed my first attempt and inserted the right key I wondered why the edges always resembled those mountain ranges I drew in my first drawings. Were keymakers all failed mountaineers?

*Click*. The door opened to reveal a red carpet. Ah! A red carpet welcome. Torn and quite possibly not vacuumed or shampooed since the mid nineties but a red carpet nonetheless. Off to the side was a staircase and a little sign that had obviously been printed out from Powerpoint. It said 21-23 within an upward pointing arrow. Guess I would be climbing. I looked up the stairs and the cast on my foot and told myself "If some douchey keymakers can do it, so can you." I felt like a speaker. Or a Chinese chef I used to watch in my living room ages ago when our family first bought a TV.

I was panting. Like an overweight dog in summer. But it felt good. I'd conquered Mt.Sixteen. As I looked down the stairs at my conquest I saw my suitcase sitting snugly at the bottom. Dammit all to hell!!

This time I was panting like an overweight dog that had carried another overweight dog on its back for the entire summer. I looked at my fellow dog with a sense of pride. Apparently they dont do analogies at Samsonite.

A pantful couple of minutes later I made it to the front of No.23. Total Five. Maybe it was a date. Which Month? Eighteen percent chance. There! Got the regular stuff out of the way. "Huh! Maybe this is what familiarity feels like. Having the same thought over and over again." Good old inner voice. Always on the look out for the answers to the human condition. The key that had failed at the first door met with no resistance this time. This time I was faced with wooden floors and semi-darkness. No matter. One red carpet was more than I deserved. I walked over to the black leather couch. So that is what I am one of those chronic bachelors. Black Leather couch, coffee table filled with remotes, 45 inch Plasma, ESPN HD sports package, a Mac, broadband and hidden porn. I guess if I checked the fridge it would be filled with Beer and week old Papa Johns. Ever since the accident it had felt like I was in that John Saxe poem about the elephant in the blind men. Only in my case I was both the blind men and the elephant. I spotted a few coasters on the coffee table with stains that would match the diameter of beer bottles. My leg and cast sat perfectly on the edge of the table. Like I had measured it before. For the first time in a long time, things seemed to add up.