BRAIN TEASER

 “Brain and brain! What is brain?” 

It’s a great line from one of my favorite Star Trek episodes. A planet of sexy, alien babes steal Spock’s superior brain to run their entire planet: electric, water, air, and apparently sewage. 

The sexy, alien babes have to use a special computer helmet to juice up their own atrophied brain power to be able to perform the surgery necessary to steal Spock’s brain and then install it in the planet-wide power plant.

When Kirk and company show up to retrieve Spock’s brain, the sexy, alien babes have reverted to their sexy, alien, baby state, and they don’t even know what a brain is. Thus, the fabulous ‘what is brain?’ line. 

Kirk keeps insisting they return Spock’s brain. They insist that they are stupid.

Once in a while, I feel a bit like those sexy, alien babes who can’t remember how they managed brain surgery without a college degree.

Like the time I lost my car keys . . . for two weeks . . . in my own purse. 

“Hey, babe,” I said, breaking the news. “I can’t find my keys.” I paused. “Anywhere. And I’ve looked.”

“Did you look in the truck?” he asked. 

I taped my finger against my chin. “That would be the anywhere I was referring to.”

“How about on the desk, the bed, the kitchen, the office, the barn, the passenger side door . . .” The list continued.

“How could I have lost them in the passenger door? I had to open the house with the house keys located on the same keychain as the key to the truck key.”

He sighed. “Your purse? Your pants? Your closet? The refrigerator?”

“The refrigerator!!!!!  Isn’t that a sign of mental disease or defect?” I spluttered.

To say that the conversation deteriorated from that point would be unnecessary.

I chalked up the loss of my keys to life and living, also the slow melting of my brain due to overuse rather than atrophy, until the day I noticed a tiny, barely-there pocket in the side of my enormous laptop case-slash-purse. 

“What’s this?” I asked the silent universe. Tucked carefully into the barely-there pocket were my keys. I was happy, as happy as a sexy, alien babe might feel after stealing Spock’s excellent brain to power my whole darn civilization.

I was happy . . . also chagrined. I mean who can’t find their own keys inside the confines of a single, multi-use purse? A sexy, alien babe, that’s who.

Brain and brain. Where did I put my brain?

Linda (Sharp as a Tack) Zern