The Freelance Retort: Brain Train

I’ve been trying to brain train my brain.

But it never listens...and that’s a problem. It just blabs and blabs and blabs; all day; all night.

Like it has a mind of its own.

My brain is never satisfied...ever.

If you happen to find me sitting quietly, somewhere, on a street corner, munching on a Turkey leg, my brain isn’t thinking, Mmmm, this is one good turkey leg!

No, it’s thinking...Mmmmm, I wonder if I could have gotten a better turkey leg at that other turkey leg store...and how did I end up on this street corner? Did I get on the wrong bus again?

Or, if it’s not thinking that, it’s probably thinking, I’m gonna miss munching on this turkey leg when it’s gone. I wonder how long before I get another turkey leg like this one...and what time does the next bus come by?

So by the time I’ve finished munching on the turkey leg, I don’t even feel as if I had a turkey leg.

I’m just some weird guy sitting on an unknown street corner holding onto a greasy, old turkey bone, thinking to himself...Ok, this is weird...I usually go for the wing.

It’s just how my brain works...always has, right from the get go.

Was that the best birthing experience I could have had? Did I nail the landing? I bet I could have given a better first cry. Did I look sufficiently bewildered when I opened my eyes? Was it wrong of me to have told that little girl in the next crib she should demand a belly button re-do?

Even then, I was so busy analyzing everything in front of me, that before I knew it I was already two, wondering...what happened to the good old days, back before I learned to walk and talk; there was a lot less responsibility with not walking and talking, not to mention the endless pressure to get my colors right.

And yeah, I still have a little problem connecting all those damn animal sounds to the proper farm critters, so what? My brain knew, even at two, I was never going to be a farmer, so what’s the big deal?

But now, after tucking more than a few decades under my belt, not to mention that extra twenty pounds rounding out my silhouette, I look back and realize just how many magic moments my brain has let slip by; endlessly scrutinizing each and every moment, thereby essentially looking past the moment and eventually missing the moment entirely.

Which now makes me wonder, why do I use so many adverbs in a sentence?

Is it some sort of insecurity, maybe from my past, like the time in 6^th grade when I couldn’t define what an adverb was and was humiliated in front of the entire class?

Oops...sorry.

See?

There goes that idiot brain of mine, again. Off on another tangent; missing the point entirely.

Or...maybe it’s actually making the point, entirely.

Maybe I’ve misjudged my brain and it’s actually a lot smarter than I am, after all.

Who am I to think I can train my brain?

What...wait ...what?

I almost fell for it, again!

Distracted off the path before me by my recalcitrant brain.

What I really need to do is teach my brain to just shut the f— uh—faraway thoughts off and stick with the moment unraveling.

Forget the past.

Forego the future...and forage in the forest at hand.

Which my brain is telling me makes absolutely no sense, whatsoever, but I’m ignoring it since I’ve always been a sucker for alliteration.

—or should it be at foot?—

It’s a work in progress, this brain train thing.

I imagine it’s gonna take some time...a long time.

I don’t need to know why that guy constantly licks his fingers; just that he does, and I should remember not to shake his hand.

And if you tell me you like pools better than beaches, I won’t spend more than an hour trying to figure out what past traumatic event put you down that misguided path.

But most of all, if you tell me something “is what it is”...I’ll assume that it is and not spend the next few days trying to come up with a good reason why it shouldn’t be something else.

But then you’ll owe me a drink, possibly two, more likely three, with a sunset waning in the distance as a series of shooting stars streak across the darkening horizon, while a dolphin’s song hangs on the warm sea air.

Because it’s gonna take that kind of idyllic moment to keep me from giving a frenzied lecture on hackneyed clichés such as “it is what it is” as a feeble attempt to rationalize something without a decent dissection of all the reasons why it can’t be that simple and, when you think about it—

Maybe I should have been something else, instead of a writer.

Maybe a podiatrist or a dentist.

How much does a podiatrist or a dentist have to think?

A foot is a foot...a tooth is a tooth...see the tooth, pull the tooth.

But most feet are gross...and never mind teeth.

I don’t even like looking at my own teeth.

I know...I should have been a politician.

Politicians never think.

How perfect is that?

Yeah...it’s gonna take a long long long long long time to brain train, this brain.

It is what it is.

Unless....