Chapter 29: Day 28

Day 28,

First day of Cass helping out at the library.  I still don’t know how I’m going to have someone as an apprentice when I myself have no training, have been at this for less than a month, and am basically making it up as I go.

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Today mostly went pretty well, with one exception that still has me reeling when I think too hard on it.

As is becoming a routine, I met Cass and her family on the road, got a ride into town, helped them unload at the market, and then headed on to the library, although this time Cass joined me.  I went through the small bit of training and description of duties that Pat gave me on my first day of the job three and a half weeks ago, and then added in the bits about the request system I set up for when I’m not in and how we’d also be having occasional expeditions to various landmarks to give more thorough scientific(-ish) documentation of them.  And then we moved on to my current recataloging efforts.

Somewhere during all this Cass mentioned (with some disappointment) that the rainy season when she’d be helping out full time would be the time when the teaching of the younger kids happened and that between that and the weather we wouldn’t get to do much exploring.  This led to a discussion on teaching kids how to read and write.

Which then led to my newest existential crisis.  It finally registered that if I stop and think about it and concentrate on the individual letters on a page or sounds coming out of my mouth I’m not actually familiar with the language I’ve been speaking, reading, and writing in for the past month and if I think too hard about it, it all breaks down and I sort of just… stop… processing… language.  Or maybe that’s just panic/anxiety attack symptoms going into a mental spiral.  At any rate, I’m almost certain that this isn’t the language I used to speak before washing up here, yet I can’t recall a single word of whatever that language was.  And that’s if I indeed actually existed before waking up on the beach twenty eight days ago, but that’s a whole other rabbit hole I flatly refuse to entertain going down and I’m stopping that thought there.

What’s almost worse is that I’m pretty sure I scared Cass with that breakdown, as much as she tried to hide it.  Oh, and this all means that I don’t actually understand the fundamentals of this language I’m apparently fluent in, and my brain figuratively melting if I think too hard about the fundamental components of how I’m processing and using said language isn’t exactly conducive to teaching small children.

So yeah, that’s fun.  And maybe a little bit less than “mostly pretty well” for today actually.

Of course, this inevitably brought us to the prospect of Cass teaching me during these days that she’s acting as “assistant.”  This is going to do truly insufferable things to her ego, isn’t it?

Still, the new usurping overlord of the archives extended the now-usual invitation for market day dinner, and I accepted in desperate need of a change of topic.  And of course, her new apprenticeship was the main topic of dinnertime conversation.  Fortunately, my haggardness was noted, good natured ribbing about having to deal with Cass all day was had, and the conversation soon shifted.  When we got around to the part of the night where the Archivist tells a story, they told me I didn’t have to if I was too tired, but frankly I welcomed the opportunity to send my mind elsewhere for a while.

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