Missing Thoughts

I used to laugh at people who would get up, walk out of the room, and come back in asking if I knew why they had left the room. Those people were such idiots to me. I laughed and laughed at my dad when he did that. When he would sit down he would remember what he had gotten up to do. He would hop up... well kinda sorta amble up to honest... and head into the other room. You may think I am prone to exaggeration on this blog but I have told you a million times I don't exaggerate here. This time I'm really not exaggerating. There was once when I saw him get up and down three times before he made it back into the room with a glass of iced tea. It was such a complicated thing to remember. Oh how I laughed at him.


Now that I am a dad I was please to see that my son did the same thing my dad did. I'm thinking it's genetic. He hopped up (really) and started to head to the kitchen. Then he asked me what he was going to get. I offered several suggestions. Backpack? Soda? Arsenic? A killer whale? Oddly none of those seemed to be the item he wanted. Remembering how my dad would be able to recall his lost thought merely by sitting down, I suggested that he try the same thing. It worked. He went to the kitchen and came back with a hammock, an ice cream sandwich and five palm trees. That was really impressive because I thought we were down to our last four palm trees. Have I mentioned my son is a lot like me? Scary, isn't it?


This gave me an idea about a theory that I first heard offered by Bill Cosby many years ago, In a standup routine, the Coz,suggested that ideas hide in the buttocks. When you sit down there is not enough room in your gluteus maximus once it gets squashed by the weight of your bellyus maximus. The thoughts then must return to the brain where they once again share what you were doing with the rest of the body leading you to once again get up and head to the other room.


Now my dad's thoughts loved to play hide and seek with him. They would go from cranium to rectum time and time again. I really think it was his body's way of making him get a little bit of exercise. The funny thing is there were times when my dad would get up, forget what he wanted and sit back down only to find the thought could not find its way back to the noggin. It has been more than twenty-five years since I last watched my dad doing his middle-aged mentalism; however, I do have a theory about what happens to a thought when it doesn't come back to the brain when you sit back down. My father, whom I loved with all my heart, had a rather unwholesome tenancy to which many men are prone. He could be rather flatulent in the right circumstances or wrong circumstances or any circumstances. That means he could fart on command or even if you begged him not to. Now consider this: If a thought is hiding in the bum and you rattle the windows as you break – make that shatter – wind while you are getting up, then you realize you forgot what you got up to do. Sitting back down into the green haze caused by your passing gas, you cannot remember what you wanted. The reason is you can smell your idea that escaped.


Farts are thoughts that got lost on the way back to the brain. You know you're going to be thinking about this every time you get into an elevator with a bunch of strangers who need to experience your thoughts.