The Numbers Game
One of the things I love to do with my mother is, when we’re out in the car, I’d ask her to read out the number plate of the car in front of us. In the past, she’d not only done this perfectly, she’d actually surprised me by adding up the numbers and giving perfect answers each time. And then, beyond addition, sometimes she’d multiply the numbers and come up with perfect answers, too!
This reminds me of the evening we were watching a Taiwanese game show in which contestants were shown pairs of numbers and they had to multiply them and give the answer as quickly as possible. Mother played along, reading out the numbers and giving the correct answer each time. She even commented that some of the contestants were giving wrong answers!
Actually, her ability to do additions and multiplications so well is due to how she was taught to do them – by memory. And also by the sound of the numbers. Even I was taught that way – by memory – except for me, the teaching done in English got me to repeat the multiplication tables as in “2 times 2 is 4″, “9 x 6 is 54″, etc. Whereas, for her, she was taught in Cantonese and to say “2 2 4″, “9 6 54″, etc. So whenever she read out the car number plate to me, she would sometimes go on to give the answer, because it was automatic for her, ingrained in her memory from long ago that the dementia has not destroyed. And once I knew she had the ability to do this, I would “test” her, as a way of challenging her mind and keeping it from slipping further into dementia.
Of course, she lost this ability with her recent minor stroke. I still remember, when taking her to the clinic, I would ask her to read the number plate of the car in front of us. Sometimes, she’d say she could not see the numbers. Sometimes, she would try to read out the numbers. On good days, she would get 2, sometimes even 3, of the 4 numbers right. I could see she would be trying really hard, but the effort often tired her very quickly.
Now that she’s back to her old self (oh boy, is she back to her old self!), I tried the numbers game with her during our last visit to the clinic last week. I did the usual, asking her to read the number plate of the car in front of us. At first, she asked which car. Then she said “cannot see” . Finally, she read out the numbers correctly, but in a different way from what she’d done before.
The numbers were one, nine, four, five. But instead of reading them as one, nine, four, five, she said nineteen, four, five.
Well, is that creative or what?
*proud daughter*
Thank You, Lord!
