I Like My Little Brain

I quite like my little brain, the way it thinks, the way it works things out.

An ornate miniature workshop built around a brain, with dusty cubbyholes, an ADHD wing, a thinking department, a fax machine, and a police officer leaving through the mouth gate

I might be in an awkward situation and my little brain will think of something funny to say, something to break the ice. I do not tell it to do that. It just wants to. And sometimes it wants to punch well above its weight, saying something that sounds far more intelligent than it actually is, bless it.

Every now and then it sees something and it triggers a memory from a dusty cubbyhole where an old note slipped down the back years ago. It digs it out, dusts it off, passes it through the synapses, and hands me a random thought completely out of nowhere. And I have to smile, not a big laugh, just a quiet little giggle to myself, and think, where on earth did that come from.

It has its patterns too. Always sending faxes off to head office, asking for a bit of oil for the atrophied bits, a touch more oxygen so it can wire up some new connections. That is the thinking department for you, off in its own lab like a mad scientist, not the slightest bit interested in what the nervous system is doing, or the lungs, or the emotional department down the hall. Just data and beakers and its own bright ideas, until somebody from emotions turns up with a cattle prod and gives the scientist a jab until he finally looks up from his notes.

It has its harder days too. Some days it fidgets and scatters, chasing six things at once and finishing none of them, the ADHD wing having a field day. Some days something slips out sideways, quick and involuntary, awkward before I can catch it, though those moments are getting rarer. And some days it locks onto one thought like a dog with a bone and simply will not let go, round and round the same groove until it wears itself out.

I still like my little brain when it does that.

For years I had a police officer stationed in the corner, checking every single output before it was allowed through the mouth gate. Somewhere in the last six months I gave him his marching orders.

Which is a problem, really, because you take you with you wherever you go.

So now, without my own personal customs officer stamping things on the way out, whatever my little brain cooks up just walks straight into the room with me, quirks, patterns, and all.

It is not always tidy, but it is mine, and I quite like it that way.