Or do I have a head injury?

[resonant]

You know, the longer I spend in post-menopausal word loss --

"if you don't live in a country with an active -- aw, hell, I've lost the word -- not royalty, not monarchy, not oligarchy, the thing where some people have better blood than other people --"

"Aristocracy?"

"Thank you!"

-- the more familiar it looks to me when Ray Kowalski says "the Northwest Areas" or starts the Miranda statement and then loses his place and trails off.

(Due South content in 2022 is thanks to fox, who KNOWS WHY.)

Comments

[fox]

Incidentally my favorite "or do I have a head injury?" take was something by (I'm almost positive) laurajv in which he did in fact have a head injury. Stella made a comment about his having aphasia. I adored that. (I don't remember anything else about the story, I don't think, but what I adored was Laura's treating off-hand remarks as if they were just as true as . . . on-hand remarks. There was a Sentinel one of hers where Blair really did fly Apaches in Desert Storm. ~heart eyes~)

[resonant]

I remember that story, but I couldn't remember who wrote it.

And I just reread Dira's "Relax," where Ray really did (sort of) get abducted by aliens when he was ten.

[desireearmfeldt]

And doesn't Dira's hockey AU (Hawks and Hands) have hockey-player!Ray with the aftereffects of too many concussions, including word-retrieval?

[laurajv]

ohai

*hides face*

(eta: the one with the head injury was "Baresark": https://archiveofourown.org/works/775 )

[fox]

❤️

[jesse_the_k]

and it's brilliant! I can hear every word of your Ray saying:

I dug with words which as anyone knows are not my best friends, and I dug with yelling at him every chance he gave me which was a lot, and finally I dug with my fist. Bam! Just like that.