Get Me Oliver Sacks, Stat!

I was just spending lunch time at McDonalds, enjoying a Mushroom 'n' Swiss Angus burger while turning out a book evaluation for this company that employees me for my opinions now and then. This Asian fellow, about 55, walks over to me.

"That's a nice laptop, heh," he says.

"Yeah," I reply, "It's old though. About six years. It might as well be an slide rule."

The guy walks away and I get back to work. About 5 minutes later I hear "That's a nice laptop, heh." Same guy. I say thanks. He walks away to his seat.

It happens again another 5 minutes or so later, except the sequence is more like "Heh, that's a nice laptop." Over the course of the hour we relive the same moment over and over again. I start changing up my responses: it's yours! or Do you have one? Then the people he's with, apparently his nurses, gently pull him away from me and walk him out to the car.

He seemed like a pretty likable dude, short term memory problems aside. I wonder if he spends any time trying to figure out who killed his wife?