A Mind Asleep

My mom flipped through the small ring-bound book and pointed to one of the pages. “What number is that?” “Uh, 7?” I guessed. “Are you sure?” she asked, her brow furrowing. “What about this one?” She flipped to another page and showed it to me. I glanced at the disk of differently sized colorful bubbles. “There’s nothing in that one,” I said with confidence. While waiting for the doctor to call us into the exam area, my mother and I continued perusing the book. Some of the colorful bubble pictures had numbers in them. In one, a seven made of blue disks stood out against a background of green disks. In another, a red four amidst purple bubbles. Other pages were just fields of different shades of the same color with no recognizable pattern. My mother was clearly flustered by my answers. She stopped at one of the numberless pages. “You really don’t see anything there?” “Nope.” “It’s a three, Daniel.” “What?” “There’s a 3 right there. It’s green. You can’t see it?” she asked, in