Thistle Adventure: What's My Brain Tossing At Me Now?

On our travels Ed and I play with interesting topics, like brains. How they work, or not, and why. Topics like this travel with us for hours.

“Rabbit's clever," said Pooh thoughtfully.

"Yes," said Piglet, "Rabbit's clever."

"And he has Brain."

"Yes," said Piglet, "Rabbit has Brain."

There was a long silence.

"I suppose," said Pooh,

"that that's why he never understands anything.”

A.A. Milne, Winnie-the-Pooh

My brain runs amuck. I've needed to engage in corrective behavior from time-to-time. For example, I hate it when my very own brain makes me feel guilty or afraid. The trick though is catching it in its misdeed. The brain insists it's on track, as it crazily zigzags through life, tossing junk at us. Overcoming its own truth is not the brain's forte.

On our travels, a few weeks ago it rained all night. My brain, however, was still in drought mode. It instructed me to not waste Benton's stale water, but to instead pour it on a shrub outside. I watered a rain drenched shrub.

Bang! Both Ed and I jumped. Was that dynamite? Wow, where? We were on a deserted beach on a sunny day. Bang! Again. We saw it this time. A wave hitting the rocks, Bang! Bang again! Brains don't always get it right.

I often need to tell my brain to shut up, especially at 3:00 a.m. My loved ones are safe in their beds, but, that brain of mine has me fretting about one imminent disaster after another. If it can't fool me about disasters it will pester me with minutiae.

My brain sends me other messages I need to stomp out. Thoughts like desire instead of restraint; anger instead of calm; jealousy rather than reason. My brain can't always get it right and I need to correct it's wayward path. I need to assert reason into crazy random thoughts. Fingers crossed I keep my mouth shut until reason is found again.

And what is it about retrieval? I know the word I want, but where is it? I turn to Ed for help. "What's that word I'm searching for? You know, the one that has to do with space travel." "Rocket, Saturn, moon?" He suggests. "No!" I say. If he can't help me, I get peeved. It's Ed after all who says "we have a distributed memory system." If I can't remember, he must. It's his job, right?

Then hours later, my brain, working all the while, throws the word at me. Ed and I will be talking about the weather or some such, when I suddenly say, "Sputnik". "What?" he says. "Remember that word I couldn't think of?" I say. "Oh yeah." he says.