You were leaning over the edge of the subway platform to see if the rat that was scuttling around the filthy tracks would be crushed by the train which collided with your skull. When you woke up, fifteen operations and thirty-six months later, math was no longer your forte.

You can’t keep up with the plot lines of the shows that you stare vacantly at on your television. Once or twice a week, you decide to join your dog in his yard defecation but you still scoop it up. Your neighbors don’t bring it up when they greet you by the mailboxes and you usually can’t remember who they are.

You should go check the stove at this point.

If you don’t, the smoke detector will begin beeping loudly because of another kitchen fire. The noise will draw Tammy out of her heroin haze and she will surely yell at you as she quells the flames with a needle dangling from her skeletal arm.

You know she is terrified of fire and has been since the Shady Acres Mobile Home Park burned down in its entirety on her sixth birthday.