“It all happened so suddenly.”
“He was such a quiet neighbor.”
“One day he’s as normal as you and me, next they’re driving him off in a straitjacket.”
“Suddenly he’s senile.”
“Suddenly he couldn’t hear anything I said.”

Just now, google gave me 148,000 results for suddenly he and 80,100 for suddenly she.

Usually, suddenly just means that we weren’t paying attention. We ignored warning signs of hearing loss, psychosis, senility; anything we’d rather ignore happens suddenly. A google search just now gives me zero results for “suddenly he was slim.”

Because we don’t pay attention closely, people can pass. For them to pass as what we’d rather see them as, for what they’d rather be seen as. You can pass as white. If you’re a guy you can pass as a woman. It works the other way around too. You can pass as a lot of things. We won’t mention passing gas, this is a serious post. You can write books about passing. You can write lots of books about it.

Someone I know who has suffered a heart attack recently got me thinking about this. He seemed a little loopy last time I talked to him, but was doing a good job at faking normality. That’s why senility seems to happen so suddenly. People can lose large chunks of their memory and still pass for normal by faking it. By employing conversational tricks to cover up the fact that they can’t remember your child’s name, or even who the hell you are.

This sick relative, who is by the way making a miraculous recovery, appears more confused than before. This is due in part to the fact that he is in a genuinely confusing situation, but also because oxygen deprivation just might have claimed a few more brain cells. When he is under stress, he seems more senile and confused. I think it’s because it’s harder for him to work around those holes in his head at those times.

I have also seen this with my own father, who is losing his hearing. He has been losing it for a long time. Watching him talk to other people, I have seen him fake the ability to understand everything they say. Now and then he’ll give himself away with some small thing, an inappropriate response. Most conversations you can get through by just letting the other person talk and acting interested. The worse his hearing gets, the more often I notice his little tricks, since I’m looking for them, especially when he talks to me. With a lot of people, he can still pass for normal hearing; this is usually of no importance, although when he does it with his doctors, say, it’s a problem.

I catch myself doing it too. As my hearing gets worse, I fake my way through more and more conversations. People just think I’m a good listener, when I do it right. I pass for a lot of things. When I keep my mouth shut, I can pass for an Austrian. Sometimes even if I speak, depends on how my accent is doing that day. Rarely do they guess I’m American. Sometimes I wonder what else I’m passing for. Am I a good father, or just passing for one? Loving husband?

Does it matter?