The musical reference in the title is so embarrassingly cheesy that I’m not even going to ask anyone to identify it. I’d like to pretend that it was just a coincidence that I chose those words, that I don’t really have that song running through my head. I’d like to pretend that I don’t know the rest of the lyrics. Sadly however, none of the aforementioned is true. My brother had the album. Yes, I said album. On vinyl. I was little. I thought it was cool. I now know better, but no matter how hard I try, I can’t unlearn those songs. It just kills me to know that there is a section of my brain that is entirely devoted to Loverboy lyrics.
This post is evolving as I write it. I was going to write about ways we kill time at work on a slow Friday afternoon, such as the one I had today. Then as I began to write the above paragraph about the title I realized that it might be much more fun to think about the useless things that are taking up valuable space in our brains. Space that we can never get back without electro-shock therapy, which I’ll have you know, still goes on regularly today. I know a doctor who does it.
Here is a list of things that are taking up invaluable space in my brain, space that I wish I could recover and put to better use.
1. Lots of lyrics to lots of bad music.
2. 77. That is the number of days I was dating my 12th grade girlfriend when she broke up with me two days before a concert that I already had bought expensive tickets for. I lost $15 selling her ticket to a friend the day before the show. Whenever I hear the number 77 that is what I think of.
3. The fact that the guy who played the oldest boy in The Sound of Music later played Spider-Man in a 1970’s t.v. show.
4. The word usufruct.
5. Todd Bridges and Dana Plato were getting jiggy with it when Diff’rent Strokes was on the air.
6. The fact that I still know who Todd Bridges and Dana Plato are.
7. I still remember a badly done civil war re-enactment myself and several friends did as a Social Studies presentation in the 4th grade. We basically just played guns in front of the class and tried to pass it off as a history lesson.
8. I remember walking around outdoors in just a diaper while my dad changed the oil in our car. I was about 1 ½ years old at the time. It’s amazing that I remember that random event, but why? I also still remember that the diaper was full.
9. A dog my family had for 3 weeks when I was 14. If we had kept the dog, fine, use up some brain cells remembering it, but it was too old to be house trained when we got it, so we returned it.
10. At the shelter where we got the dog it cost $25 to adopt a dog and only $10 for a cat. When we returned the dog we took home a cat, so as far as I know, my family still has a cat and a half credit at the shelter. (Cat and a Half Credit would be a great name for this post or for a rock band)
Those are but a few of the millions of useless things that are taking up space in my brain. What do you find when you rummage through the back of the closet in your mind?