My Brain

Such as it is.

A recent embarrassing incident has led me to believe my brain is full. It was bound to happen. My brain has been storing things since the Truman administration, hanging on to information that it apparently believes I will need to know at some future point, such as the theme song for the 1955-1960 TV series Robin Hood, which goes (I quote from memory):

Robin Hood, Robin Hood, riding through the glen!

Robin Hood, Robin Hood, with his band of men!

Feared by the bad! Loved by the good!

Robin Hood! Robin Hood! Robin Hood!

This is only one of dozens of long-defunct-TV-show theme songs my brain has seen fit to retain. Among the others are:

-- Bat Masterson (”He wore a cane and derby hat! They called him Bat, Bat Masterson!”)

-- Jim Bowie (”His blade was tempered and so was he! Indestructible steel was he!”

-- Daniel Boone (”Daniel Boone was a man! Yes a BIG man!”)

Of course my brain also remembers every commercial jingle it was exposed to for roughly the first 30 years of my life. When it’s 2:37 a.m. and I have insomnia, but after tossing and turning in bed for hours I’m finally, finally about to fall asleep, my brain will suddenly burst into song as follows:

I love Bosco! That’s the drink for me!

Mama puts it in my milk for extra energy!

This is my brain waking me back up to let me know, in case I was worried, that it has this jingle stored in a safe place and will never let me forget it.

I was an English major in college, where I read and discussed in detail numerous plays by Mr. William Shakespeare. My brain has chosen to remember virtually none of them. If I were ordered, at gunpoint, to provide a quotation from Shakespeare, my brain, in desperation, might be able to cobble together something along the lines of:

JULIET: Wherefore art thou, Romeo?

ROMEO: Psst! Juliet! I art down herefore!

But if the gun-pointer demanded to know the lyrics to the 1964 Cookies song “Girls Grow Up Faster Than Boys,” my brain would take at most a nanosecond to come up with:

Won’t you take a look at me now?

You’d be surprised at what you see now!

I’m everything a girl should be now!

Thirty-six, twenty-one, thirty five!

Or let’s say it’s not a person with a gun. Let’s say it’s an ER physician, leaning over me as I lie on a gurney critically injured, urgently asking me what my blood type is. I would be unable to provide that information, because, although I have been informed of my blood type numerous times, my brain has not deemed it worthy of permanent storage. But if the physician asked me who sang “Double Shot of My Baby’s Love,” I would immediately reply that it was the Swingin’ Medallions. My dying words would be: “That’s Swingin’, with no ‘g.’”

The Swingin’ Medallions

You know the kitchen drawer where you keep your mystery keys, and the remote controls that don’t control anything you currently own, and your collection of inexplicably sticky random coins, mostly pennies, some of them Canadian and a few from countries you cannot recall ever visiting such as Finland, and the flashlight whose batteries have been dead since 2011 and appear to have contracted some kind of battery leprosy, and the electronic adapter thingie that might once have had something to do with either a Palm Pilot or a Sony Betamax, and your arsenal of dried Sharpies and other completely nonfunctional writing implements, and at least three rock-hard tubes of vintage Super Glue, and the manufacturer’s warranty for the waffle iron you donated years ago, unused, to the Salvation Army, and the clump of disintegrating rubber bands that appear to be trying to mate with a naked cough drop, and the many other random items you are keeping handy in your kitchen drawer that are of absolutely no possible use to you or anybody else ever?

That kitchen drawer is my brain. There’s a LOT of clutter in there, most of it from the previous millennium. But there has always been enough leftover memory space for me to function on at least a primitive intellectual level.

Until now. Now, apparently, my brain is completely full. I say this because of the recent embarrassing incident that I am, finally, going to tell you about.

It happened ten days ago at Miami International Airport, where Michelle and I had gone to meet our daughter, Sophie, who had flown in from New York to spend Thanksgiving with us. The three of us walked back out to the parking structure, and I went to a machine to pay for our parking. At the time I was holding my iPad, which I often carry with me so I can take notes on it in case, as a professional journalist, I notice something noteworthy. So far that has never happened, which means I mainly use my iPad to do the New York Times crossword puzzle, but as any journalism professional will tell you, that does not make the iPad any less tax-deductible.

Anyway, to free my hands I set my iPad on top of the parking machine, as illustrated by this dramatic re-enactment photo:

As I was placing the iPad on the machine, I turned to Michelle and Sophie and made an announcement in a loud, comical, announcer-y voice: “Notice what I’m doing here!” I said. “I’m placing my iPad on top of this machine!”

Then we all laughed. The reason we laughed is that a year and a half ago, I placed this very same iPad on top of this very same machine, and then, after paying for my parking, I walked away, leaving my iPad lying there. A few minutes later I realized what I’d done and hustled back to the machine, but my iPad was gone.

The good news was, the person who picked it up apparently worked at the airport. I know this because Apple has an app called “Find My,” which, by using some kind of magical rays, enables you to see where all your devices are, and I could see that my iPad was still at the airport. The bad news was, whoever picked it up did not immediately take it to the Lost and Found office. Instead, he or she took it to a part of the airport where the public can’t go. I could clearly see it on the Find My map on my iPhone, which I showed to — this is a conservative estimate — 17,500 airport employees. Their consensus was that my iPad was somewhere in or around the Customs offices. I will not bore you with the details of my extensive efforts to speak to a live human in Customs about my iPad, other than to say it would have been easier to arrange a private luncheon with both Taylor Swift and the Pope.

So I knew where my iPad was, but I couldn’t get to it. This was frustrating, but I had a plan. By coincidence, four days after I lost my iPad I had to fly from Miami to San Francisco for a fully tax-deductible reason. I could see, from obsessively studying the Find My app, that once I got through the TSA checkpoint, I would be able to walk to a place on Concourse D very near where the map showed my iPad. I thought maybe there might be a door or something there, some way I might be able get to my iPad.

So I went to the airport early, and after I got through security, I navigated with my phone to the spot closest to where it showed my iPad was. This turned out to be a store that sells empanadas, a delicious fried pastry popular in Latin America. The young man behind the counter was polite, but he did not speak a ton of English beyond what is necessary for empanada-related transactions, and I do not speak a ton of Spanish beyond “Un momento por favor, mi esposa habla español,” which means “One moment please, my wife speaks Spanish,” which is true, which is why I never learned to speak Spanish.

So our conversation did not go smoothly. The polite young man asked if he could help me, and I said I was trying to locate my iPad. He said he was sorry, but they did not have iPads, just empanadas. So I showed him the map on my iPhone, which he frowned at politely, although he clearly did not see what it had to do with empanadas. Then I pointed at the wall behind him and said that, according to my phone, my iPad was back there. He turned and looked at the wall, which was a solid wall with no door or any other kind of opening, just a list of the various empanada options and prices. He turned back to me and said — he seemed genuinely apologetic — that he did not have any iPads back there. He reiterated that basically what he had, at the empanada store, was empanadas.

After several more embarrassing attempts to make him believe in my invisible iPad, I slunk way, leaving the young man still smiling politely, although clearly relieved to be rid of this lunatic gringo who might at any moment insist that, concealed somewhere in his empanada store, perhaps beneath the beverage case, was the Ark of the Covenant.

So I flew to San Francisco, defeated. But while I was out there, the Find My App, which I was still monitoring obsessively, informed me that my iPad had moved, and it was now in what I could deduce, from studying the map, was the Miami airport Lost and Found office. So I when I returned to Miami I hustled right over there. You can imagine the feeling of relief I felt when the nice Lost and Found lady, after rummaging around in the back, brought me: an inflatable turkey.

No, seriously, she brought me my iPad. Yay! So that story had a happy ending, and it became part of Barry Family lore: The Saga of the Lost and Found iPad.

That was 18 months ago. Fast-forward to ten days ago, right before Thanksgiving, when Michelle, Sophie and I are in the Miami airport parking garage, and I am placing the very same iPad on top of the very same payment machine that I had left it on last year, and I am making a BIG POINT of noting this to Michelle and Sophie. I am loudly pointing out the humor of the situation, because it is so hilarious. Ha ha!

It took me, at most, a half-minute to pay for the parking. We then went to the car and drove home. Moments after I entered the house, the one remaining working cell in my brain flickered, briefly, to life and posed this question:

Dave, where is your iPad?

That’s right: I had once again walked away and left it on the parking machine, LITERALLY SECONDS AFTER MAKING A JOKE ABOUT DOING THAT VERY THING. Neither Michelle nor Sophie had noticed this; they naturally assumed, since I had just made a HUGE honking deal about the fact that I was setting it down, that I could not possibly be stupid enough to leave it there AGAIN.

So I drove back to the airport at a high rate of speed, emitting many bad words en route. But my iPad was gone. The Find My app showed that it had left the airport and was headed north out of Miami. I was sure I’d never see it again, but, incredibly, the next day it was back at the airport Lost and Found; apparently it had been picked up by an airport worker leaving work, and he or she turned it in at the beginning of the next shift. Thank you, diligent airport worker! Also: If you happen to see the polite young empanada man, please tell him my iPad really exists.

Anyway, I have my iPad back again, at least for now, and I am thinking of Super-Gluing it to my body if I can find a non-dried-up tube of Super Glue in our kitchen drawer. But that is not my point. My point is that apparently my brain is finally, after all these years, completely full. It is an overflowing dumpster of useless crap with no room for anything else. I have crossed that fine line between being “absent-minded” and having the cognitive functionality of a Hostess Ding Dong.

I’m wondering if there’s a medical treatment for this. Like maybe neurosurgeons could free up memory space by drilling a hole in my skull and using some kind of medical suction device to suck out information I am unlikely to need in the future, such as the 1950s commercial jingle for Parliament cigarettes that goes (I quote from memory):

Every Parliament gives you... extra margin!

The filter’s recessed and made to stay,

A neat, clean, quarter-inch away!

You’re smoking neat, you’re smoking clean,

With Parliament today!

This concludes my views on today’s topic, whatever it was; I have already forgotten. Before I turn the conversation over to you wonderful paying subscribers, please enjoy this classic tune by The Cookies, which is every bit as meaningful today as it was in 1964.