Where’s the Delete?

Overactive Brain
Robin Hoselton

Have you ever wondered why your mind stores useless trivia? We ought to have a delete button that will get rid of those fragments to make room for important issues like how to end wars or how to cure a cold.

I bet everyone has bits of junk information cluttering up their mental closets. One of the side effects of getting older is I don’t care whether people think me odd for admitting such things.

For instance, I woke up at 3:05 one morning for no apparent reason and couldn’t get back to sleep. A repairman was scheduled to come to the house at a more civilized hour later that day and I began speculating what I should do while he was in the house. Is there etiquette for such a situation?

 Common Sense

Common sense warned me not to leave him alone in the kitchen while I was in another room at the computer.

After all, this is a stranger and who knows what he might do–snoop through the mail, steal my antique eggbeater, kick the cat. On the other hand, courtesy decreed that I do exactly that–leave him alone to do his job. I know that I wouldn’t like someone hovering over me. At 3:20, I finally decided to stay in the living room, ostensibly reading a book.

That resolved, my brain returned to the word “exactly” which passed through my thoughts earlier. I tsk′ tsk′-ed to myself at the redundancy of our speech, thinking of the phrase “exact same.” If something is exact, it IS the same. That’s like saying “tuna fish.” Tuna IS fish. People don’t say eagle bird, do they?! VIN number is another repetition since VIN is vehicle identification number.

Since I still couldn’t fall asleep, I willed myself to think about something else and ever cooperative, but wacky, my brain asked me contemplate why women open their mouths when they brush on mascara.

Makeup is often applied in the bathroom, so it was only logical that I flit to the subject of double sinks. Why do so many people consider them a necessity in a modern bathroom? Personally, I don’t want to share such an intimate space. Even if I’m just washing my hands, I certainly don’t want to see someone else flossing teeth right next to me. Yuck!

Thinking of yuck brought to mind all the birthday cake I’ve turned down over the years. To my friends, family and acquaintances, I now confess that I wasn’t on a diet or watching my sugar intake. When a little kid blows out the candles, how can you expect me to eat a piece of that cake that has had spit sprayed all over it!

Cake is food; food is served at restaurants. So at 3:40, I wondered why it seems to be standard procedure to give a diner an ice cold butter pat to chill what would have been deliciously warm rolls. And are waiters such sadists that they enjoy seeing our efforts to spread that arctic butter end up with shredded bread?

At 3:50, I pondered romantic movies. When a couple is kissing, why does the young lady always raise one leg behind her? Dollars to donuts, I bet when she gets older (yes, old ladies are kissable), she’ll give up the practice of balancing like a stork.

By 4:00, while rummaging through my brain cells’ rubbish, I came across another dust catcher. Did you know that a giraffe’s heart is two feet long and can weigh more than 24 pounds?!

Later, my significant other asked why I got up at 4:05 that morning. “Just had a lot of things on my mind,” I answered.

Tagged common sense, delete, humor column, insomnia, overactive brain, useless information