the Brain – NEARING THE END OF THE LINE

I, JUKE BOX (Please play me…)

People say you are what you eat. I say you’re what you consume (just my short way of saying you are what you eat, what you read, what you watch, what you listen to, and whatever you experience). Because anything and everything that crawls its way into, and gets processed by, your brain becomes a part of you, after which your outlook is never quite the same. Because the ever-growing sum-total of your experience both alters and continuously filters the way you perceive and understand the world you’re living in.

(The above wisdom , courtesy of my vast and venerable 77-years of life experience on the planet, and… you’re welcome.)

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Now, here it is, let’s begin:

Music has always had its way with me. Has practically owned me. All my life. Not that that’s a bad thing. Probably because I was born into a household with the kitchen radio playing pretty much non-stop, its rhythms and vocals rocking me in the crib as soon as I was brought home from the maternity ward. Likely even before that, as I suspect I was grooving to WABI am’s top 40 while still in Mom’s buffered-but-not-totally-soundproofed womb.

And as a side-effect, I’ve developed this condition I call Juke Box Brain Syndrome (JBBS). It’s this often annoying (just ask my wife) tic whereby any random word or phrase spoken in any random conversation I’m having (with you or anyone else) just might act as a trigger, very much like a quarter dropping down the slot of some back-to-the-60’s juke box to play a song. But instead… it’s me. I am that ‘juke box.’ And I have no control over the trigger.

Typical Example: So we’re barreling down I-95, Phyllis driving and pushing 75 in a 70 zone like everybody else when suddenly some car rockets past us in the passing lane! Phyl exclaims, “Whoa! That guy’s gotta be doing 85, 90, 95 miles per hour, if not a hundred!” And then, click!

See, that’s the ‘quarter’ dropping into me, the ‘juke box’ and then, me, bowing to something like a post-hypnotic suggestion, I obediently sing (you could almost say ‘play’) a couple of lines from a song. Weirdly, the song this time turnd out to be from one of those little, yellow, plastic, 78 rpm records I had as a kid back in the 1950s. It’s titled, “The Taxi That Hurried”:

“This is the way he likes to drive, 70, 80, 95…

fast as fire engines go, compared to taxis they are slow.”

Now yes, it’s true, a couple of lines from Tracy Chapman’s “Fast Car.” would have much been less annoying.

But see, it’s never up to me. I don’t consciously choose the songs. They just come of their own accord, from the song vault somewhere in my decades-long memory.

Later in the day, in some other conversation, some other word is apt to bring up a line or two from Leonard Cohen, Doris Day, The Beatles, Dolly Parton, Tom Jones, or ABBA. Who knows? It’s like I have Song-Lyrics Tourette Syndrome. And oh, I know… so many many songs. Songs from prctically all genres. (Well except for gospel. And rap. And hip hop. I guess I’m too old for hip hop and rap, being a curmudgeon now. You know– today, having been born in the mid-1940s is like having come from another planet.)

(By the way, I can’t help being hung up on wondering if I’m the only one on the planet suffering from JBBS. I mean, surely there must be others. So please. Let me know in the comments if you, or anyone else you know, also suffers from JBBS. I will appreciate it.)

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So my CD shelf and five computers and cellphone and brain are brimming, bursting at the seams with my lifelong music collection. But fortunately, this go-to jukebox in my head has saved my sanity so many times. The songs have acted as everything from my prozac (for when I’ve been down and depressed) to my much-needed comedy channel, laughter being the best medicine. My mental health owes so much it to this affliction.

And so what I would like to do here… no, what I’m going to do here…is share with you a few of the songs from my personal comedy vault that have often tickled my fancy and pasted a silly smile on my mug over the years, despite me.

So consider this a free, unrequested playlist offered from my JBB to your brain, a sample JBB pot pourri, if you will. I have no guarantee that you’ll listen in, (hope you do give it a shot) but if you do… you’ll know something about why I’ve adopted this first one, “I’m Different” by Randy Newman, as my personal theme song.

(I’m including the lyrics so you can follow along.)

“I’M DIFFERENT”

“I’m Different “

“I’M DIFFERENT” by Randy Newman

I’m different and I don’t care who knows it
Somethin’ about me’s not the same, yeah
I’m different and that’s how it goes
Ain’t gonna play your goddamn game

Got a different way a walkin’

I got a different kind of smile

I got a different way a talkin’

drives the women kind of wild (… kind of wild)

He’s different and he don’t care who knows it
Somethin’ about him it’s not the same
He’s different and that’s how it goes
And he’s not gonna play your gosh darn game

I ain’t sayin’ I’m better than you are

But maybe I am

I only know that when I look in the mirror

I like the man (We like the man)

I’m different and I don’t care who knows it
Somethin’ about me’s not the same
I’m different and that’s how it goes
Ain’t gonna play your goddamn game

When I walk down the street in the mornin’
Blue birds are singin’ in the tall oak tree
They sing a little song for the people

And they sing a little song for me (La-la-la-la) (Thanks, fellas)

(He’s different and he don’t care who knows it
Somethin’ about him’s not the same
He’s different and that’s how it goes
Ain’t gonna play your gosh darn game)

I’m different and I don’t care who knows it
Somethin’ about me’s not the same
I’m different and that’s how it goes
Ain’t gonna play no boss man’s game

I can’t tell you how many people over my lifetime have informed me that I’m “different.”And each and every time I heartily thank them.

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Now, I spent 34 years here in this state of Maine enduring life as a career high school English teacher. And as you might imagine, getting and keeping the attention of the typical high school English student for 50 minutes every day is no easy task. It takes a magician, if you really want to know the truth. However, early on I discovered the music really doth have “charms to soothe the savage breast.” (-William Congreve [1670-1929] {whoever the hell he was}).

So now, here’s where being ‘different’ can pay off. Ever since my Mad Magazine-reading early childhood, I’ve been attracted to some pretty bizarre novelty songs, many of which came were played weekly on something called The Doctor Demento Show on the radio. I found Doctor D’s playlists a frickin’ gold mine for stuff that could really catch your typical high school student off guard.

And wheneveer I found myself bogged down trying to keep them awake while trying to teach what a metaphor is… Johnny Cash stepped right up to the plate:

“FLUSHED FROM THE BATHROOM OF YOUR HEART”

From the backdoor of your life you swept me out dear
In the bread line of your dreams I lost my place
At the table of your love I got the brush off
At the Indianapolis of your heart I lost the race

I’ve been washed down the sink of your conscience
In the theater of your love I lost my part
And now you say you’ve got me out of your conscience
I’ve been flushed from the bathroom of your heart

In the garbage disposal of your dreams I’ve been ground up dear

On the river of your plans I’m up the creek
Up the elevator of your future I’ve been shafted
On the calendar of your events I’m last week

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As a teacher, I assigned the kids a lot of creative writing, which I guess is what I loved teaching the most. Usually every year I would have my kids write an original short story. This would include employing the basics of the short story, such as CONCRETE DETAIL, CHARACTER SKETCH, PLOT, CONFLICT, COMPLICATIONS, CLIMAX, etc.

In the early stages of the project, I watched kids struggling with not enough detail or too much detail that was unrelated to the PLOT. I’d coach, “Try not to just use any DETAILS that are unnecessary.Only use specific details that will support the PLOT by helping to move the story right along to the CLIMAX.

“And secondly, the most essential key to a good short story is CONFLICT”. So I would prompt them: “Can you imagine a story without useful DETAILS, or (heaven forbid!) without a CONFLICT? I mean, what would that even look like? How boring would that be?

“Well here, let’ me show you’s find out. Here’s a little song by Bob Dylan.” And boy, would the kids ever really perk right up at his name. “Like wow, Bob Dylan! This class is really gonna rock!”

Unfortunately for them, this particular Bob Dylan song was going to be a real nothingburger, Dylan’s most comically boring recording ever. Which was my point. I mean, just look at the limpid title for starters:

“CLOTHES LINE SAGA”

After a while we took in the clothes
Nobody said very much
Just some old wild shirts and a couple pairs of pants
Which nobody really wanted to touch
Mama come in and picked up a book
An’ Papa asked her what it was
Someone else asked, “What do you care?”
Papa said, “Well, just because”
Then they started to take back their clothes
Hang ’em on the line
It was January the thirtieth
And everybody was feelin’ fine

The next day everybody got up
Seeing if the clothes were dry
The dogs were barking, a neighbor passed
Mama, of course, she said, “Hi”
“Have you heard the news?” he said with a grin
“The Vice-President’s gone mad!”
“Where?” “Downtown” “When?” “Last night”
“Hmm, say, that’s too bad”
“Well, there’s nothing we can do about it,” said the neighbor
“It’s just something we’re gonna have to forget”
“Yes, I guess so,” said Ma
Then she asked me if the clothes were still wet

I reached up, touched my shirt
And the neighbor said, “Are those clothes yours?”
I said, “Some of them, not all of them”
He said, “Ya always help out around here with the chores?”
I said, “Sometime, not all the time”
Then my neighbor, he blew his nose
Just as Papa yelled outside
“Mama wants you to come back in the house and bring them clothes”
(Woo-hoo)
Well, I just do what I’m told
So, I did it, of course
I went back in the house and Mama met me
And then I shut all the doors

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Back in 2009, my wife and I were fortunate to score front row seats at a concert in Albuquerque, NM. The concert featured the duo of Lyle Lovett and John Hiatt, both singer/songwriters. Both songwriters had a very good sense of humor, as was illustrated in some of their music.

This next song, “Old People” by singer/songwriter John Hiatt, makes me feel grateful because (ahem) I’m not one of them yet…

“OLD PEOPLE”

Old people are pushy
They don’t have much time
They’ll shove you at the coffee shop
Cut ahead in the buffet line

They’ll buy two for a dollar and 50
Then they’ll argue with the checkout girl
They’ve lived so much behind them
They’re tryin’ to slow down this goddamn world

Old people are pushy
Well, they’re not mushy
Old people are pushy ’cause life ain’t cushy

Old people are pushy
They’ll drive how they want to drive
And go as slow as they want to
They don’t care who stays alive

And they’ll kiss that little grand baby
Up and down the back and all around the front
They don’t care what you think of them
That baby has got something that they want

Old people are pushy, well they’re not mushy
Old people are pushy, cause life ain’t cushy
(Old people are pushy, they aren’t mushy)
(Old people are pushy, cause life ain’t cushy)

Old people are pushy, cause you don’t know how they feel
And when you pretend you do
Well they know it’s not real
Pretty soon it’s gonna be all over
Good enough reason not to let you pass
They done seem like sweet, little old people
But they are not about to kiss your ass

Old people are pushy, well they’re not mushy
Old people are pushy, cause life ain’t cushy
Old people are pushy, (old people are pushy)
Old people are pushy, (old people are pushy)
Old people are pushy, (old people are pushy)
‘Cause life ain’t cushy
Old people are pushy,
Old people are pushy
Old people are pushy
Cause life ain’t cushy

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Lyle Lovett also has a quirky sense of humor. He has written some very serious and beautiful songs in his lifetime, but songs like this one, “Don’t Touch My Hat” always put a Lyle Lovett smile on my mug…

“DON’T TOUCH MY HAT”

Man you better let go
You can’t hold on to
What belongs to me
And don’t belong to you

I caught you looking
With your roving eye
So Mister you don’t have to act
So surprised

If it’s her you want
I don’t care about that
You can have my girl
But don’t touch my hat

I grew up lonesome
On the open range
And that cold North wind
Can make a man feel strange

My John B. Stetson
Was my only friend
And we’ve stuck together
Through many a woman

So if it’s her you want
I don’t care about that
You can have my girl
But don’t touch my hat

My mama told me
Son, to be polite
Take your hat off
When you walk inside

But the winds of change
They fill the air
And you can’t set your hat down
Just anywhere

So if you plead not guilty
I’ll be the judge
We don’t need no jury
To decide because

I wear a seven
And you’re out of order
‘Cause I can tell from here
You’re a seven and a quarter

But if it’s her you want
I don’t care about that
You can have my girl
But don’t touch my hat

If it’s her you want
I don’t care about that
You can have my girl
But don’t touch my hat

No it never complains
And it never cries
And it looks so good
And it fits just right

But if it’s her you want
I don’t care about that
You can have my girl
But don’t touch my hat

You can have my girl
But don’t touch my hat
You can have my girl
But don’t touch my hat

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The following story/song was written by one of my favorite songwriters of all time, Harry Chapin, the man who wrote “Cat’s in the Cradle” and so many more. Humor comes in many forms. There are very different flavors of humor. In this case, the humor’s kinda grim. But man, what this wordsmith does with words! WARNING: Fasten your seatbelts, ladies and gentlemen. You are going for one hell of a ride…

“30,000 POUNDS… OF BANANAS”

It was just after dark when the truck started down
The hill that leads into Scranton Pennsylvania.
Carrying thirty thousand pounds of bananas.
Carrying thirty thousand pounds (hit it Big John) of bananas.

He was a young driver,
Just out on his second job.
And he was carrying the next day’s pasty fruits
For everyone in that coal-scarred city
Where children played without despair
In backyard slag-piles and folks manage to eat each day
Just about thirty thousand pounds of bananas.
Yes, just about thirty thousand pounds (scream it again, John) .

He passed a sign that he should have seen,
Saying “shift to low gear, a fifty dollar fine my friend.”
He was thinking perhaps about the warm-breathed woman
Who was waiting at the journey’s end.
He started down the two mile drop,
The curving road that wound from the top of the hill.
He was pushing on through the shortening miles that ran down to the depot.
Just a few more miles to go,
Then he’d go home and have her ease his long, cramped day away.
And the smell of thirty thousand pounds of bananas.
Yes the smell of thirty thousand pounds of bananas.

He was picking speed as the city spread its twinkling lights below him.
But he paid no heed as the shivering thoughts of the nights’
Delights went through him.
His foot nudged the brakes to slow him down.
But the pedal floored easy without a sound.
He said “Christ!”
It was funny how he had named the only man who could save him now.
He was trapped inside a dead-end hellslide,
Riding on his fear-hunched back
Was every one of those yellow green
I’m telling you thirty thousand pounds of bananas.
Yes, there were thirty thousand pounds of bananas.

He barely made the sweeping curve that led into the steepest grade.
And he missed the thankful passing bus at ninety miles an hour.
And he said “God, make it a dream!”
As he rode his last ride down.
And he said “God, make it a dream!”
As he rode his last ride down.
And he sideswiped nineteen neat parked cars,
Clipped off thirteen telephone poles,
Hit two houses, bruised eight trees,
And Blue-Crossed seven people.
It was then he lost his head,
Not to mention an arm or two before he stopped.
And he smeared for four hundred yards
Along the hill that leads into Scranton, Pennsylvania.
All those thirty thousand pounds of bananas.

You know the man who told me about it on the bus,
As it went up the hill out of Scranton, Pennsylvania,
He shrugged his shoulders, he shook his head,
And he said (and this is exactly what he said)
“Boy that sure must’ve been something.
Just imagine thirty thousand pounds of bananas.
Yes, there were thirty thousand pounds of mashed bananas.
Of bananas. Just bananas. Thirty thousand pounds.
Of bananas. not no driver now. Just bananas!”

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(Iris Dement and John Prine:)

After that one, let’s end on a quirky-sweet “love’ song by John Prine and Iris Dement… “In Spite of Ourselves”

This duet with Iris Dement was written with Iris in mind. Prine’s wife said she called Iris to tease her
about the song and Dement said it took a lot of courage to sing some of the lines the first few times.

She don’t like her eggs all runny
She thinks crossin’ her legs is funny
She looks down her nose at money
She gets it on like the Easter Bunny
She’s my baby I’m her honey
I’m never gonna let her go

He ain’t got laid in a month of Sundays
I caught him once and he was sniffin’ my undies
He ain’t real sharp but he gets things done
Drinks his beer like it’s oxygen
He’s my baby
And I’m his honey
Never gonna let him go

In spite of ourselves
We’ll end up a’sittin’ on a rainbow
Against all odds
Honey, we’re the big door prize
We’re gonna spite our noses
Right off of our faces
There won’t be nothin’ but big old hearts
Dancin’ in our eyes.

She thinks all my jokes are corny
Convict movies make her horny
She likes ketchup on her scrambled eggs
Swears like a sailor when shaves her legs
She takes a lickin’
And keeps on tickin’
I’m never gonna let her go.

He’s got more balls than a big brass monkey
He’s a whacked out weirdo and a lovebug junkie
Sly as a fox and crazy as a loon
Payday comes and he’s howlin’ at the moon
He’s my baby I don’t mean maybe
Never gonna let him go

In spite of ourselves
We’ll end up a sittin’ on a rainbow
Against all odds
Honey, we’re the big door prize
We’re gonna spite our noses
Right off of our faces
There won’t be nothin’ but big old hearts
Dancin’ in our eyes.
There won’t be nothin’ but big old hearts
Dancin’ in our eyes.

(spoken) In spite of ourselves

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So yeah… Now you know a little more about me, and where me brain’s been.

Stay tuned if you dare for Part II, coming soon, wherein I will share with you music from my stash that I feel is not only creatively composed,but has been honestly impactful and instructive in my life.

Thank you for Listening.

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SHE’S INTO NUMBERS

by Tom Lyford 5/12/04

She’s into numbers

I’m into words

Numbers (just to please her)

parade goose-stepping

all spit&polish

columnrank&file to her

drum-major-baton cadence

under the Big Top of her

the 3-ring-binder, 3-ring circus

of her bookkeeper’s spreadsheet mind…

& to her sharp whistle, the digits wheel,

group & regroup smartly into the Good Ol’

Red & Black half-time extravaganza

(rah! rah!),

vault with spectacular precision,

somersault through numeric hoops,

dance on their hind legs

(tails all wagging as 1),

fly the arithmetic trapeze, & with

the greatest of ease, perform the boring

high-wire ledger-balancing “accts.” &

other acts of legerdemain to the polite

applause of all…

Now… put numbers under my command

& in no time they will deteriorate into

a rag-tag band of undisciplined

smoke’em-if-you-got’em goldbricks

forever whining to take 5 —

an unwilling occupational force in a country

of rebel resistance to numbers.

She’s into numbers… but me?

I don’t really care for numbers…

at all. No no, I’m into words…

I’m prejudiced. See…

I don’ need no steenkin’ nombres!

I’m an anti-numerite. I mean, what’s to like?

they’re all the same, they all look alike

You can’t tell’em apart

You seen one 1? Then you seen’em all

(all the 1’s are alike— little letter “i”

wannabes)

“1 is the loneliest number you can ever do…

2 can be as bad as 1: it’s the loneliest

number since the number 1”

& get this: there are just too many

negative numbers, know what I’m sayin’?

Numbers like… minus ten, right?

How’d you like to be a negative 10?

On, say, a scale of 1 to 10?

Oh, and…ever notice how “cosecant“

sounds a lot like “ ’course he can’t ” ?

Makes me wanna shout out, “Why,

of course he can” every time…

Plus… it’s not like there are really any

hot little numbers, you know? (Well,

except maybe 110 degrees in the shade

or Fahrenheit 451

but even those numbers are relative

to the words that must accompany

them… Yes, numbers are just

pathetic little word-wannabes)

But worse, numbers are the Nazis, so

military & rigid, precise & absolute

autocratic, and so class-conscious:

all that emphasis on… greater than

or… less than or equal to !

I’m much too democratic for numbers.

She’s into numbers—I’m into words.

I mean come on! Words have more fun.

Words are the blondes of symbols

(but intelligent blondes) always doing

something creative and different !!!

But with numbers it’s always

same ol’ same ol’S.S.D.D.,

been-there-done that-got-the T-shirt.

Surprise: 2 + 2’s never gonna = 13

& what else are numbers gonna do

besides add …subtract …divide????

Oh, numbers can multiply but they

can’t be fruitful & multiply…

and for stodgy numbers… there’s

no sex, no drugs, no rock’n roll,

Numbers can’t get drunk or buzzed:

(Hey 30, whattaya say we get

factored right ff our asses tonight!)

Jeez, numbers can’t even swear

because there are no dirty numbers

(well, OK, doing #1 #2, but…)

so that’s how boring numbers are

& there’s only 10 of them altogether

10 insubstantial little hen-scratches

count’em— 0 through 9…

3 times more repetitive than the

much more versatile 26 letters of the

superior alphabet from whence cometh

our world of lush and sexy words…

She’s into numbers…I’m into words.

Gotta be a left brain/right brain thing.

Hey, wanna kow something I do? OK.

I actually look up words! In dictionaries!

Hell no, even more: i read dictionaries !

For her, looking up words is like…

cleaning the oven… cleaning the toilet…

I love puns & palindromes;

she loves sales ledgers & sums.

I do onomatopoeia; she does audits.

Me? Metaphors & meter; her? Money matters

Poetry & prose for me;

principal & interest for her.

I can’t help looking upon integers

& interest with extreme dis-interest,

and I am just so nonplussed with

plusses & minuses.

So yeah. She’s into numbers…

Long ago, the numbers body-snatched

her soul, leaving behind her

look-alike pod, hatching integers

like spiders to protect

& to serve her, their Queen

their Numero Uno

All the evil little numbers…

millions of minions to do

her darkest bidding…

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BRAINS

I’ve got this… thing about brains. No, not in the zombie way. But I’m just hung up on the very essence of the phenomenon we call the brain. For me, the human brain is an unimaginable, alluring mystery, totally worthy of pondering. So yeah, I think about the brain. Not all the time, but a lot. I read about the brain off and on.. And I often find myself writing about it. Hell, I’m setting out to write about it right here and now.

But being ‘only an English major’ I’m scientifically handicapped, aren’t I— way over my head in deep waters. No Bill Nye the Science Guy, me. I know that. But still, I just can’t seem to get myself past marveling at how you, I, and Bill Nye the Science Guy are totally reliant, for everything, on what appears to be nothing more than an approximately seven-by-three-by-four-inch “walnut”-shaped lump of Silly Putty nestled in our brain pans like some inert loaf of bread. And… that this lump is universally hailed by the entire civilized modern world to be the best damn Central Processing Unit and hard drive combo in the known universe, bar none. I mean, that just… boggles the brain. Yes, I’m incapable of anything more than writing odes to the human brain, inexpertly philosophizing about it, or asking the for-me-elusive-and-unanswerable cosmic questions about how this organ manages to do what it does. So this little essay is bound to end up just being another essay paying homage to the walnut-shaped lump.

Now wait! Don’t you go walking away telling me that, sure, the brain’s important and everything, but it sure as heck ain’t interesting! Are you kidding me? Interesting? Why, the brain is fascinating six ways from Sunday! And I’m betting I can prove that with just two freakin’ examples.

Example #1: Ever hear of Phineas P. Gage (1823-1860)? The man who did more for the science of brain surgery and neuro-studies than any man alive today?

Now hear me out. He wasn’t any white-coated scientist or doctor. So what was he? I’ll tell you what he was. Phineas was a common laborer who blasted out rail beds with explosives for a living. And I don’t know if he was a loser or not, but he certainly didn’t have enough brains to know you gotta be pretty darn careful when you’re tamping down blasting fuses into black-powder-packed holes with a thirteen pound crowbar! On September 13^th (13 being the unlucky number here), 1848, he was working for the Rutland and Burlington Railroad up in Cavendish, Vermont. He was whanging that crowbar into the rocks when a spark launched it like a Chines fireworks rocket right up through the side of his face and out the top of his skull, landing with a clatter on a granite slope some eighty feet away. And after the echoes died away and the smoke cleared, there sat old Phineas, conscious and as aware as any of the crew.

And he could still talk. And the next thing you know, he was walking back to the wagon that would convey him back to his lodgings in town where he would confound a physician brought to examine him. Yes, Phineas Gage who by all accounts should have dropped dead on the spot but instead went stubbornly on about the business of living minute by minute; then hour by hour; eventually a whole day; and after that a day at a time… tor twelve years! Yes, a frontal lobe partially lost and a ghastly fame won, our hapless survivor of “The American Crowbar Case,” as it came to be called, entered into the Annals of Science and Medicine as Neuroscience’s Most Famous Patient, the individual who single-handedly contributed more than any other earthly soul to research regarding how specific regions of the human brain control personality and behavior , giving the big green light to decades of experimental lobotomies, all the way up through One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest…and beyond.

Example #2: Would you believe me if I told you that there was once a famous case of somebody’s brain being kidnapped? Perhaps you have. If you haven’t, you may think I’m joking, or misinformed. I have to admit it does sound like something right out of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’s Frankenstein… if not Mel Brooks’ Young Frankenstein. But no, it’s true. And guess whose brain it was. Albert Einstein’s! It’s true. Einstein’s brain was stolen shortly after the autopsy was performed on his body right after his death in 1955? And you needn’t take my word for it. Just look up “Einstein’s Stolen Brain” on Google and you’ll get many links to articles and documentaries on the subject from a number of immaculately credible sources.

Or… why not simply sit back, relax, and enjoy this 3+ minute tutorial about it I’ve just borrowed from YouTube:

I can’t help but wish I were sufficiently brainy to be part of a scientific medical team that might get the opportunity to scrutinize the leftover fragments of what is allegedly the most ingenious brain in human history. I mean, just try to imagine for a minute all the recorded thoughts, ideas, memories, events, scientific formulae, facts, opinions, experiments, theories, sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and tactile sensations that once resided (in biological ones and zeroes) in the brain with the I.Q. that was off the charts.

By contrast, most of us humbly presume that our cranial databases consisting of phone numbers, lottery numbers, computer passwords, favorite memorized song lyrics, movie quotes, baseball stats, family birthdays, and future calendar events that we’ve got socked away “upstairs” don’t amount to a hill of beans compared to the Famed Physicist’s. But hold on. Not so fast…

Sure, Einstein’s brain probably is by far the Rolls-Royce of Gray Matter, but on a sliding scale? I contend that mine and yours are nothing less than a pair of shiny, brand-new Cadillac Coupe DeVilles. Because whatever the damn thing is that we’ve got sitting up there under the hood actually is… it’s constantly at work soaking up data like a cosmic sponge from every single thing our eyes, ears, noses, tongues, and fingertips come into contact with. 24/7. From day one (the birthday) until this microsecond. If you ask me, that’s one damn fine, unbelievably busy, multitasking piece of hardware.

And it’s said that under hypnosis, a subject can recall lists of long-forgotten birthday presents she/he received at any age. I mean, how’s that for a universe-class computer?

Mine’s a 1946 model. And like the old Timex watch commercials of the 50s and 60s, it’s taken a licking and kept on ticking. I just did the math, and I find that I’ve been drawing breaths for approximately 42,000,000 minutes give or take, in my lifetime. And that’s only so far. So, I’m getting pretty decent mileage.

And here’s a thought: just imagine hooking up a printer to your brain and commanding it to print out your brain’s entire stored cache from birth. Whattaya think that would look like, hmmm? I’m betting you could tape all the pages together and string’em to the sun and back.

Anyway— in my very first blog post, “Unstuck In time With Billy Pilgrim,” (posted about 24,500 minutes ago) I shared about how so many of my very-long-ago-forgotten childhood memories keep surprising me, just popping up randomly, unbidden and unexpected, into my conscious thoughts. And that’s in stunning detail to boot. The memory I kicked this blog off with was a particular one of when I was four years old, at a family reunion in the early 50’s up in northern Maine. I wonder how many megabytes that little stored event takes up in my skull. I’ll never know. And if I had to guess, I’d speculate that the total data capacity of the human brain is measurable only on yottabytes. Two minutes ago I didn’t know what a yottabyte was. But then I googled “What unit comes after terabyte?” The answer on my screen read “After terabyte comes petabyte. Next is exabyte, then zettabyte and yottabyte.” It turns out that a yottabyte is equal to one septillion, or a 1 followed by 24 zeroes. And honestly, that explanation goes right over my head. I can’t fathom it. A shame we’re not allowed to use the full 100% of our brain’s capacity.

Regardless of that, when I die… there goes my four year old’s family reunion memory.

And there are maybe gigabytes of others. And since I’m wallowing in the plethora of memories that are doomed to die of with my passing, lemme share another sample just for fun, one more specific, little, neural-ones-and-zeroes anecdote that’ll be rolling right along in the hearse with me on the way to the drive-by crematorium someday soon. And perhaps this one will further cause you to reflect on the gems you’ve got stored in that yottabyte treasure chest of yours. Think about all the currently out-of-sight, out-of-mind memories, which are endless, that you’ll be taking with you when your time comes.

So go ahead. Meditate a little. And take yourself a little stroll down your memory lane on a sentimental (and in many cases not so sentimental) journey. And surprise! See what might pop up.

OK. Once upon a time, boys and girls… back in the twentieth century…

OK. See, I have this kid brother. Twelve years younger than me. He’s an engineer. And after high school he enrolled in a Boston engineering college. I know that I, along with the rest of our redneck immediate family, worried needlessly about him leaving our safe, one-horse town environment to venture into the great, who-knows-what of…The City. But he flourished there. And upon graduating with his degree, he was immediately snatched up by a large technological firm and settled down in large housing development in a nearby suburb.

One day shortly thereafter, he telephoned us to relate the shocking news that in his absence someone, or more likely someones, had broken into his new apartment and stolen practically everything but the kitchen sink. Including his trash! (He figured they’d pretended to be transfer station employees and had unnoticeably taken their spoils in trash bags along with them out to the getaway truck.) We were horrified. So immediately my wife and I traveled down to his emptied-out pad to give him some familial love and whatever support we could muster. Late that morning however, we found him in good spirits, taking everything in stride. A lot better than I would have. He assured us that his was, in fact, not a bad or dangerous neighborhood, not really. And we were like… Oh, really?

Anyway, that afternoon we spent some time enjoying the horse races at the old Rockingham Park, dined out that evening, and eventually went to bed. I say bed. Phyllis and I slept comfortably on the living room floor. (Ah, to be young again.) I’m not sure, but I’m thinking The Beagle Boys left my brother his bed. Too large and difficult, probably, to smuggle out in a standard-size trash bag.

But then, sometime in the middle of the night, Phyllis and I were rudely awakened not only by the number of voices muttering just outside the apartment’s front door, but by the disturbing, pulsating, red, blue, and amber lights bleeding through the slats of the picture window’s Venetian blinds. Close Encounters of the Third Kind came immediately to mind. “I’m going out there,” I told Phyllis as I yanked on my jeans. I mean, if there was a ufo landing out there, I’d be damned if I were going to miss out on it.

So I cautiously cracked the door open and slipped out into the coolness of the summer night. There was a large crowd standing stock still on the front lawn, facing away from me and at the three or four strobing police cars, the firetruck, and the ambulance. I sidled in amid the rear of that crowd. I remember looking behind me and spying Phyl’s worried pale face watching me from beneath the lifted blinds.

It took me a few moments to take in all that I was seeing, especially the dreamlike little drama going on at the front end of one particular patrol car. Two cops were down on their knees, flashlights in hand. Curiously, they were peering straight in under the front end of the vehicle. And repeating something over and over. “Come on. Come on out from under there. Now!”

I was thinking, Out from under there? Out from under where? Under what, the patrol car? What would somebody be doing under a frickin’ patrol car? This just didn’t sound good. At all. And talk about eerie. In the frozen, hushed silence, this had all the makings of a bad fever dream.

I began looking around, surveying the lay of the land. The first thing I couldn’t help but notice were the tire tracks in the lawn. A vehicle had obviously come rounding the corner of our building to my left and driven this way, toward the parking lot in front of me, straight across the immaculately mowed lawn. And judging from the six- or seven-inch-deep tire tracks in the grass, and the gouts of mud and grass clumps spun all over the place, this vehicle hadn’t just been going fast, it had been accelerating! My eyes followed the tracks to where they morphed into a pair of black rubber smears on the asphalt of the lot.

“I said… come out of there. NOW!”

Also, a long chain of heavy iron links lay like a rope on that asphalt. Attached to the chain, spaced at intervals, were the uprooted poles that once held the links up as a barrier to vehicles, a fence if you will. Said car had plowed right through said chain link fence, for crying out loud.

“Hey! I’m serious, Mister! Come out!”

I returned my gaze to the tableau before us, as much as I could make out of it between the backs and heads of the witnesses in front. Of course, some of the backs and heads belonged to uniformed police officers. And there were several of them at this scene. I turned to my right and discovered I was standing next to a towering, black, muscled god of a man. I craned my neck up to speak to him and spoke very softly in the silence. “So, uhmmm… what… exactly… happened here?”

He looked down upon my pathetically inquisitive face. “They run him down,” he said. “They. Jus’. Run. Him. Down.”

Now, he didn’t voice that very loudly, but in the solemn quietness it was loud enough that three cops with stern glares immediately snapped their heads back around to see who had just spoken those very accusatory sounding words.

And me? Just like that old Kenny Rogers’ line? You’ve got to “know when to walk away… know when to run.” I executed a smart about-face and scampered back into the apartment with my tail between my legs!

Next morning when my brother, finally awake, stepped out of the bedroom, I hada coffee waiting for him. I’d just purchased the coffee at a convenience store a block away from the apartments, since the coffee maker had gone missing with the stereo, furniture, etc. But the real reason I had gone to the convenience store was to see if I could find out any information as to what had really gone down in the night before.

“So,” I said to my brother, “you like this neighborhood, do you?”

“Yeah,” he said, nodding. “Pretty much.”

“You feel safe here.”

“Yeah.”

“Hey, I’ll tell you what. take the coffee outside. I gotta show you something.”

Out front in the sunlight now, you couldn’t possibly miss the egregious in-your-face evidence. The lawn was torn up a lot more than I’d been able to notice the night before. It was obvious now that the squad car had been gunning it fast and hard, practically all the way around one side of the whole building complex. Likewise, a much greater length of the uprooted chain fence lay snaked along the edge of the lawn.

According to the convenience store proprietor, the perp had tried unsuccessfully to break into one of the apartments during the day, while the three of us had been spending the afternoon at Rockingham Park. Somebody had caught him in the act, chased him away, and called the police. The cops had apparently decided to keep an eye on the complex and, in fact, had been surveilling the scene of the crime when the perp had actually returned. A chase had ensued, ending up with the perp being apprehended and scoring a free ambulance ride to a local hospital.

Before heading back for home, I asked my brother to send me any more information he could glean about the incident to me because… well, enquiring minds want to know, don’t they. So a week later, this news clipping arrived in the mail:

So. How important is this little incident in the larger scheme of things? Well, despite the fact that I thought it was pretty cool, it’s of no importance whatsoever. Unless you were the perp, of course, whose first name turned out to be Paul. Or some of the cops who ran over and arrested him to the tune of “Bad boys, bad boys. Whatchoo gonna do? Whatchoo gonna do when they come for you?” Oh yeah, and unless you were me, who got a really cool, momentary adrenaline rush from it, something I live for in this otherwise boring world.

But… see, when I die, this little recorded event goes straight down the tubes with me, both of us taking that long Green Mile ride to our local, drive-by crematorium. (Well, except now that I’ve shared it with you.) so for the time being it’s also temporarily nesting like a little egg among your brain cells, too.)

Now, look around. Look at all the people. The people you know. The people you don’t know. The gazillions and gazillions of people you can’t see, those that have lived on this earth since time immemorial and have long since passed. All those brains. Carrying what? Knowledge, that’s what. Valuable experience. Unspoken death-bed confessions. The key to Rebecca. The answer to what’s buried on Oak Island, if anything.

So having pondered what may have gone down the drain with Albert Einstein, whattaya suppose Janis Joplin’s brain took with her? Or Mickey Mantle’s? How about Dwight D. Eisenhower’s? Muhammed Ali’s? Elvis Presley’s? Johnny Carson’s? Leonard Cohen’s? Genghis Kahn’s? Charles Bukowski’s? Your buddy, Joe Six-pack’s? And what other odd jumble of things have you amassed in your hippocampus?

I think of all the zillions of important and unimportant brain records that get flushed down the toilet of death, millions and millions of times every week. How about you? Have you ever had these thoughts about… the brain?

Did I mention that I’m kinda obsessed with the human brain…? I think I did.

HOME

ALTERED STATES Part I

At a local hospital back in ‘51, I had my first experience of being put under with ether. My tonsils were to be removed. And little Chicken Little 4-year old me, my sky was falling. I practically had to be hogtied and dragged kicking and screaming, into the operating room. It wasn’t pretty. I didn’t care how sore my sore throat had gotten, I wanted no part of it. There just had to be some other way, any other way. Mostly because this was back in the day when doctors routinely got away with grinning right into your little face and lying through their teeth with impunity. “Now, this isn’t going to hurt one bit, son.” That bullshit lie had been lied to me every time I’d been hogtied and dragged to a doctor’s office before so I was expecting The Big Hurt, but I never expected anything like I was about to experience:

In my memory, this is kinda how it went down:

LITTLE TOMMY’S VERY 1ST BLACKOUT

(let’s play a little “game,” tommy)

my brain still freezing up with

all the new vocabulary:

“tonsillectomy,”

“adenoids,”

“ether”…

(let’s see if you can

count backwards

from a hundred…)

NO. NO! I DON’T WANT TO!

me, 4½, laid out on the table , a little

dissection-tray frog-in-a-johnnie

johnny on the spot box-canyoned in

by a faceless wall of halloween

gowns & masks

onestranger-danger-demon

unstoppering an evil vial of

hospital-fumes concentrate,

terror in a bottle, splashing

a gauze rag with the liquid

(ok, tommy, we start with 100…

right…?

then 99…

so…?

what comes next…?)

the ice-wet invisible-flame rag is

what comes next, slapped over

my mouth & flaring nostrils

and pressed

down

(come on, now… what comes next, tommy?)

stifling my silenced

fire-throated

screechface…

searing my cheeks…

burn-buttoning-up my eyes

what comes next is that i

become a kicking fighting

rikki tikki tavi clawing the

poison gag off my head and

flinging it splat against the wall

bringing reinforcements

bearing down on me like

towering thunderheads,

one for each limb, one to

clamp my face in a vise

bad-dream people

cooing sweet lies

hell’s pigeons,

overpowering

muscling me

drowning me in betrayal

pinning me down

me struggling down…

succumbing

down…

sinking down

down to the

bottom of a

cellar-dark

sunless

sea…

And right before I completely winked-out in the jet-black ink cloak of death—I saw something!

Bubbles!

At least that’s all I could think to call them. Not like soap bubbles though. You’d never’ve been able to make out bubble-pipe soap bubbles against such a black background. No, these were bright-white rings (not disks), like perfectly round onion rings, only pure electric white. Rising slowly up and out of sight… which is how I knew I was sinking down. Big ones, some small, and some middle-sized. Slowly spooling upward like the music roll in a player piano. And then suddenly floating up into my view as I was sinking my way down, came a definite surprise:

The frogman!

My brain immediately recognized it for what it was because I had a little toy Navy skin diver I’d gotten as a prize out of a box of cereal at home. You’d pack a little plastic compartment in him with baking powder, sink him in your bath water, and he’d bubble for a bit before eventually rise back up, supposedly for air. But the scuba man that I was passing on my way down seemed to be a drawing of one, just like all the little white circles, in that he was basically a pure white outline of a frogman. As if he’d been drawn with a white marker on a page of black construction paper. The vertical cylinder drawn down his back was the “air tank,” and the horizontal oval across his face, the face mask. Just a typical, basic line-drawing picture you might find in a coloring book for toddlers. And he wasn’t animated in any way, didn’t move at all.

And that was that

I woke up minus the tonsils but with an razor-cut sore throat, dried blood on the front of my johnnie (yes, I remember being horrified at discovering that), and the frosty six-pack of cream soda, my reward.

The dream excited me long after. I remember trying to describe it to Mom, Dad, my siblings, and the neighborhood kids, but I really didn’t have much of a command for words back then. “Black,” “frogman,” and “bubbles” didn’t translate all that well. They just thought it was funn. But that experience was really a big deal to me. Kinda magical. I’d never had dreams anything like that one before. And I dwelled on it for weeks thereafter, often trying to sketch that little Navy frogman amid all his bubbles with pencil on paper.

This is what gets me: The brain is such a magical little device. So mysterious, like something you’d expect to find residing in Alice’s Wonderland, like the hookah-smoking caterpillar for instance. But no, this marvel remains alive and kicking right upstairs, embedded just above the shoulders inside that body of yours – your very own little state-of-the-art-PLUS nano-computer, plugging away 24/7 at taking care of your business. It’s just that 99% of the time you’re so busy using the darn thing, you forget it’s even there. Of no conscious concern to you. And why should it be? Who’s got the time to contemplate their navel, let alone their brain all the time, right? I mean, we’d get bogged down in no time if we were continuously pondering all of the lobes and circuits and various functions going on up there. I mean, you’ve got a life to live, haven’t you.. So any philosophical queries about your brain just naturally hafta get put on the back burner, almost totally out of sight, out of mind.

However there are certain times throughout life when your sub-consciousness may get jolted out of its complacency, a time when you end up feeling a rare need to put those workings of that brains-on-board of yours under the microscope. A hospital is a common place for it to happen.

For instance I’ve known of a number of people (but two personally) who sustained temporary brain injuries. In both cases, the injuries seemed to temporarily knock out whatever the little censor-subroutine programmed into our gray matter is… the one that unconsciously keeps us (well, most of anyway) from swearing like jolly Roger pirates all the time in public. (Some of us don’t need a brain injury for that.) One of the patients was a young, fairly saintly Methodist Sunday school teacher, and when her parents came rushing to her side at the hospital, they suffered near deaths from embarrassment when confronted by her barrage of more loud F-bombs than was ever spoken by the cast in the movie The Boondock Saints. How odd, our brain…

Hospital administered prescriptions and anesthesia cantake our brains down paths less traveled, as can high fevers, mental illnesses, abject fear, and even extreme tiredness . Personally, over my relatively long lifetime I’ve personally experienced a fair number of bizarre reactions to hospital-administered anesthesia and medications. They weren’t so much fun when I experienced them, but they’ve become something fun to look back on and talk about in retrospect.

In 1977 I was hospitalized to undergo a laminectomy. Somehow I’d crushed a disc in my lower spine and was in such agonizing pain I could no longer walk or work. surgeon described the procedure I was about to undergo thusly: “Imagine your disc as a little can of crabmeat. When it gets squished , it pops right open, squirting crabmeat every which way. Some of the crabmeat collectson some nearby nerves, hardening there and putting a great deal of unwanted pressure on them. This pressure is what’s causing your extreme pain. A laminectomy is where we go in and scrape away all of that painful crabmeat.

My hospital roommate turned out to be a young Vietnam vet, obviously in much worse pain than I. Our surgical procedures were to be somewhat similar, with his obviously being the more perilous and painful. His injuries were located up along the forward sections of his spine, meaning that the surgeons were going to have to cut their way in from the front, and then push his stomach temporarily out of the way so they could get at his spine. The description made me almost pass out.

After his surgery the next day, he came back reeking of warm antiseptics and moaning ghastly moans in a troubled sleep, especially when they rolled him like a corpse-in-a body-bag back off the gurney and sacked him back onto his bed. I watched as they re-connected him back up to the IV’s and monitors. Then they logged his vitals and swept out of the room. And I, with nothing better to do, settled in for the long watch, waiting for him to come to. A half hour later his longer drawn-out moans started getting mixed with mumbled curses, primarily sighed F-bombs. And at last his eyes, the wild eyes of some crazed, stampeded steer, opened and burned into mine. “Fuck!” It was spat at me like his condition was somehow all my fault.

I said, “Hi.”

Then he jumped the bejeezus out of me by suddenly yelling, “HEY!” at the door to the hallway which had been left open. That volley had stopped a passing nurse in her tracks. She turned, smiled prettily, and said, “Yes?”

“Percodan!” It was spoken like a command, the way someone might say, “Your money or your life!”

Her eyes twinkled as she continued the pretty smile for an overly long moment, sizing him up. “Well, we’ll just have to see what your doctor has to say about that, won’t we.” And away she went on down the hall.

He fired the single word “NO!” after her. I was shocked. But she was gone. So what? The hallway was filled with ambulatory nurses, wasn’t it. And as each one passed, he’d stop moaning long enough to call “Percodan!” at them. They paid him no mind. Apparently he wasn’t unique.

It was both humorous and pathetic. And as time went on, his plea became an auctioneer’s sing-song: “Percodan percodan percodan percodan…” with his hand, held palm up like some legless beggar’s squatting in an alley of a Moroccan bazaar, awaiting alms. “Come on, people! You’ve got it. I know it. You know it. We ALL know it! Eventually, of course, it paid off. When it was time for his meds anyway, of course. A nurse did materialize, dropped the prescribed Percodan into his sweaty little palm, and cooed sweetly, “There. I hope you’re happy now.” He was, thank God. I rolled over onto my back.

A bit later, I noticed it had gotten very quiet. Too quiet, as they say in Hollywood lines. I looked over. And there he was, lying on his side, looking straight back at me, a big grin plastered all over his face. “You’re feeling better,” I observed.

“Oh, you better believe it,” he said. And then he started doing something terrible. He began struggling at pushing himself upward with his elbows and arms! He was trying to… get up!

“Hey! Whatta ya think you’re doing!?”

“Gotta… take… a piss.”

“No no NO! Stop that. Right now! You’ll rip out your damn stitches for Chrissake!”

“I’ll just be a minute.”

“NO!” I clawed the little hospital room buzzer out from under my pillow and laid on it, sounding the alarm, and started yelling, “Nurse! NURSES! HELP!”

He’d actually gotten his legs dangling over the side of the bed before a small phalanx of nurses and doctors rushed in and almost literally tackled him. They got him wrestled down onto his back. In the ensuing struggle, and as they went to work checking his incision, I unfortunately caught just a fleeting glimpse of his wound. And it was awful. A foot or so long, an “smile” cut across the abuse-swollen, pink-salmon abdomen like some Stephen King Halloween grin, all crazy-stitched back together with black surgical threads like the kind Polynesian natives used to sew up the eyes of their infamous shrunken heads back in the nineteenth century . I came close to gagging. Close to fainting. But…

I was also thunderstruck. I had just learned something. I was thinking, Wow. With a few-hours-old serious injury like that, and he was serenely smiling. He was gonna get up on his feet and head to the can. In all that pain. I mean, Jesus, that “percodan’s gotta be pretty powerful and mighty stuff!

Good to know…

The following afternoon it was my turn . I got wheeled back in and dumped like a side of refrigerated beef onto my slab of a bedbed. My roommate, my guru, was sitting up and waiting for me with an opioid grin. The pain got overwhelming. But in no time at all, my coach had me going through the routine by the numbers: Hey! Nurse! C’mon! Percodan percodan percodan… and right away I got to discover first-hand the perk behind what it was that put the perk in Percodan. It was magic. My body was dying in pain and yes, I knew this… but my brain didn’t. It was crazy. Oh sure, there was still a lot of pain, but it was nothing like the dreaded Percodan-less agony, was it. Not only that, I’d also discovered two side effects of The Big Perc that I was going to have to get accustomed to dealing with during my hospital stay.

The first being that Percodan left me drowsy and helplessly prone to drifting off to dreamland without warning several times a day. That wouldn’t be so remarkable if it weren’t for the dreams. I’d be in a car or on a bike that would start rolling, faster and then terrifyingly out-of-control faster and then, all of a sudden WHAM! I’d end up slamming face-first, eyes-wide-open into a brick or concrete wall. Short-lived little dreams, yeah, but they’d jar me awake so violently that I’d almost tear my stitches loose. And man, that was exhausting!

The second effect turned out to be really wild and weird, but didn’t involve dreaming. See, I’d brought along a couple of books to keep me entertained during my stay. One was a paperback anthology of humorous literature. In that one, I began reading one titled “If Grant Had Been Drinking at Appomattox,” a James Thurber short story.” Right from the get-go, I found it myself thinking, Wow, this is pretty cool, so funny! Another page or two into it, it had become outright hilarious, and I was giggling after every paragraph. I couldn’t get over just how damn funny Thurber actually is, you know? And then for some reason, my giggling wouldn’t stop. It was like the babble of a brook, just… on-going. And then…it started getting louder. Sounding more like the low roar of a river than a brook. Shit, man, I was crazy-giggling… I don’t know how else to put it. I mean, yeah, this was one of the funniest stories I’d ever rea in my damn life but somehow I’d gotten stuck in an endless loop. it just wouldn’t stop tickling my funny-bone. I couldn’t stop it. I mean, where were the brakes on this book? I was out-of-control in a world of Can’t-stop-it hilarity! Down-and-out gut-busting, hoo-ha gasping guffaws! Tears-in-my-eyes, snot-running-outta-my-nose, laughing-gas laughter! Sobbing, cackling, wheezing… demented! Help,-somebody-please-come-and-STOP-me… madness!

The two nurse angels of mercy (might have helicoptered down to into my jungle of unreality) began trying to wrench the toxic tome from me, but my iron hands would not be unclamped. I’d become a Charlton Heston. “You can have my gun when you pry it from my cold, dead fingers!” Momentarily , they were successful at managing to bend one finger back at a time…

They laid me down. They inspected my stitches. They told me to try to calm down. They told me I could have the book back later. “Now, you go to sleep now, alright?” I told them, OK. So they bid me goodnight. And before you could blink,I did fall asleep, totally exhausted. And I was swept right off to La-La-Land where, minutes later, I pedaled myself straight into a brick wall at ninety miles an hour!

On the morning of my final Percodan tablet, taken minutes before, my roommate suggested, “Let’s you and me take us a little walk.” Me being the Cowardly Lion, I cautioned that that probably wouldn’t be such a great idea, it being that we hadn’t been granted permission to stray from our room. By now, however, we were allowed to walking to and fro from the bathroom on our own but, still, I didn’t think…

Well, I wasn’t being paid to think, he countered, and come on, wasn’t I getting sick of being confined to those same lousy four walls too? And of course, I was. We donned bathrobes and hospital slippers. “But not too far,” I cautioned, to which he explained that it was only a matter of a few steps to the elevator. So OK. We stuck our heads out the door, scouted the hallway and, minutes later, pressed the elevator’s “Up” button.

“Let’s go right to the top, the penthouse suites.” And so up we went. And I’m guesstimating the was institution comprised a dozen floors at least. The elevator doors slid open. We peeked out. A low key kind of floor. Less busy than ours. Our kind of floor. We left the lift and shuffled straight across the hallway right into the first room we’d laid eyes on. Unoccupied, yes. Both beds made. Identical to our own downstairs, of course.

The view however, unlike ours, was gorgeous. We were at the top of the world. All sunshine and blue sky. Off to our left lay the shoreline of the beautiful blue Atlantic. Below us, the cityscape. All little streets and side-roads and intersections with toy cars and trucks crawling this way and that, stopping at streetlight intersections and moving on. We were looking for interesting landmarks.

And then we spotted one. The Golden Arches! Mickey D’s! Oh yes! “OK. I’m having the Big Mac meal” he told me. “Want me to pick you up a happy meal?”

“I dunno. Better than the jello and custard we’ve been eating. What toys come with’em this month?”

“Does it matter?”

“Nope. Just hurry back soon? You know I can’t stand the fries when they get col… oh, JESUS!”

Somebody’s loose kite just wafted right up out of nowhere to our window on an updraft of the wind outside, and began hanging there, at a tilt, a matter of inches in front of our very eyes!

“Holy shit!” my roommate added. “That’s a… That’s a… fuckin’ seagull!” And it was, that’s exactly what it was, beady little idiot eyes glaring straight through that window into ours, hooked-beak-to-noses! Hanging airily like a Casper the Flying Ghost balloon on the other side of the glass!

“Oh, wow, man…”

“Yeah.”

“Look at’im! Is he for real?” I mean, somehow, he was remaining just pinned right there in the middle of the air like some fake, yet realistic 3-D display.

“Well, I’ll tell you what I wanna know… like, just how the hell did he even know we were even gonna be up here anyway?”

And it was such a stupid, dumbass, and illogical question that I just laughed right out loud. And my laugh mad him laugh, and… well… that and the fact that I suddenly farted. And Jesus, that’s all it took, it was as simple as that. The giggles began. And the giggles didn’t stop . And oh no, before you could even find the brakes, it was already too late,we were laughing our asses off! Laughing way too loud, both of us, a somehow very strained and muscular laughter but at the same time, the hilarious laughter of little girls at a late night sleepover. And damn, I just knew the Big One was coming, I could feel it, grumbling up there like a winter’s worth of snow starting its grinding, gravitational slide down the roof, wave after wave of it. And then it hit! Both of us this time. Both at once. THE RAPTURE OF THE LAUGHTERS FROM THE RAFTERS! Avalanching down on top of us, burying us alive, smothering, suffocating us! Both of us this time.

Thankfully, a party of three nurses, clucking like a trio of petulant hens, found us. Down on our knees. White-knuckled fingers clamped desperately to the sill, hanging there, sniveling, a pair of snot-nosed, giggle-sobbing bats. Suffering lockjaw from the hard bellowing.

Emergency wheelchairs were rolled in, the “patients” expertly installed into those and then whisked back to the waiting elevator. The “down” button was pressed. (And man, didn’t we need our “down” buttons pressed.) And so down we went. Back down to our shared room, to be put to bed. A couple of naughty little boys. And the contingent of white-coated superiors who summarily “debriefed” them.

Yes, that Percodan was pretty powerful and mighty stuff! I’d never heard of it in the ‘70s until then, and I was surprised, (well, not so surprised, not really) to Google it and find out it is a combination of oxycodone and aspirin. I guess the surprise is that I was doing oxy’s way back then.

The laughter episodes herein can sound pretty funny. But the truth is, there was something very unfunny about it. That being that the uncontrolled, unstoppable laughing was a lot like having a terminal case of the hiccoughs from hell. Percodan, coupled with a innocuously humorous moment, triggered it, but there was the danger of not being able to untrigger it. It became more of an very unfunny seizure, actually. It was an exhausting experience…

So yeah, I find the workings of our brains interesting. Always have. Speaking of which I do, by the way, have a couple more “hospital anecdotes” lined up to add which, I believe, are purely humorous and true. I plan to share in these in “ALTERED STATES II. And if you feel you might be interested, please join me in this next episode of NEARING THE END OF THE LINE, coming out in approximately a week from now.

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