I Will Always Be A Future Rocket Scientist

Brain and I had always been close. We weren't just family, we were friends. Or so I had assumed.

I never put Brain through school. Of course, there was "secretary school" where it learned typing and bookkeeping, but I always knew Brain could do better. Brain was better. I patiently waited while Brain hemmed and hawed over what it might want to study. After all, Brain was highly intelligent and possessed many talents. It could go to any school it wanted. It could do anything it wanted. This was a decision that had to be weighed carefully.

However, years later (fifteen years later to be exact) I discovered that Brain never had any intention of going to school. It was lying to me all these years! Maybe it was my fault. I never pushed Brain. Maybe I could have offered some more encouragement. After all, I had much faith in Brain. I believed (just as it kept assuring me) that one day it would do something great. I've certainly always believed that Brain could do something great.

I had always told Brain that it could do whatever it wanted: theoretical physics, modern philosophy, publishing, microbiology, photography, finance - you name it, Brain could do it. But it has recently come to my attention that Brain is not all that I thought it was. In fact, Brain is highly defective. One of the cunning tricks that Brain used over the years to maintain the illusion of its greatness was to avoid going to school, and, in fact, to avoid doing anything that would challenge its supremacy. Yes, Brain knew something I didn't, and that is this: if you never take a stab at being a rocket scientist, you can never fail at being a rocket scientist. This is how Brain succeeded in preserving the comfortable notion that it could be a rocket scientist, if only it wanted to. But of course, it didn't want to.

I had grossly overestimated Brain. And Brain had overestimated itself. That's what happens when you're the undefeated champion. And it's easy being the undefeated champion when you have no opponents. You see, Brain had been skipping, skirting and skimping whenever possible. A clever strategy composed entirely of procrastination and avoidance. And it worked, for a while. But in the last few years, it's become crystal clear that Brain is not as sharp as it claims.

Exhibit A: Brain cannot do simple math. I mean it can add and all, but when it has to subtract something Brain goes on a detour through addition just to avoid doing any actual subtraction. For example, it needs to subtract 45 from 100. Simple you say? Sure, maybe if you're a math whiz. Or maybe if you've never suffered brain damage. But what Brain does with this seemingly simple equation is it finds a "ballpark" figure, in this case 50, then it adds 45 (because I guess that's the only math it can do, or the only math it's willing to do) and comes up with 95. Then it says to itself, "Nope, that's not 100" (crafty, isn't it?) Okay, now the addition gets easier. It just adds 5 more to get 100. So Brain returns to its ballpark of 50, adds 5 and - tada! - we have 55! Of course, Brain is only required to suffer through this drill if there's no calculator around.

Exhibit B: Brain has the memory of an 80-year-old with dementia. When people meet Brain, they are in disbelief at it's inability to retain information. In fact, even the information that Brain does retain manages to get mashed into a hodgepodge of the senses. What this means is that Brain enters data from my life, the lives of people I know, films I've seen, and dreams I've had and puts them into one single data file. You can see where this gets to be problematic. But the problem goes even deeper, because not only is there just one file for these various entries, but the file has no chronological order. So, for example, something that happened in a dream in 1987 may get confused for something you told me last week. Somehow Brain and I have so far managed to get by in this fashion, but I don't have high hopes for the future.

I have to say I'm a little disappointed in Brain. I remember my mother warning me that Brain's cells wouldn't grow back, that once they were destroyed they were gone for good. But I didn't want to believe that Brain was, or could one day become, an imbecile. I had such confidence in Brain that I falsely assumed it would somehow survive my abuse and negligence without a scratch. Because, you know, Brain was mine. It was special. It wasn't like all those other brains that take a beating and then throw in the towel. No, Brain was a fighter. And it fought to win!

However, shortly after Brain's deficiencies started to come out, I realized that perhaps I had been too hard on it. Because Brain had been an only child, I had smothered it with attention and weighed it down with a shit-ton of expectations. I began to wonder if maybe Brain didn't need a friend, someone that would accept its shortcomings, keep it company and supervise its shenanigans. The more I thought about this idea, the more attractive it seemed.

Then one fine day I came home from the orphanage with Heart. Brain was suspicious at first. It didn't want Heart taking over. It didn't want anyone challenging its authority. After much infighting, Heart ultimately won Brain over with its kindness - something that Brain had never known. Deflated but not defeated, Brain eventually let Heart take over as caretaker. And although Brain is now partially retired, it will always be a future rocket scientist.

xxx