Every once in a while I start becoming aware that I’m thinking stupid things. I don’t mean to brag, but I think it’s necessary to explain that I’m normally pretty intelligent. I like to have a rational grounding for my ideas and plans. However, sometimes, my hidden moron brain takes over.
Moron brain once convinced me that I was going to be fined exorbitant amounts or possibly kicked out of student housing because I stepped onto and broke my radiator’s temperature control while I was standing on the radiator. It was clearly my fault and clearly egregious. This kept me up all night, even though the entire time I was aware on some level that it was irrational (and indeed, the next day maintenance came by and fixed it for me for the grand total of $0.00). I usually am. It’s not like moron brain makes regular brain disappear.
A few years ago moron brain made me think that a fire alarm that went off in a movie theater was an air-raid siren and that the United States had been attacked by terrorists. I was clinging to my mother and sobbing that we were going to die.
Moron brain made me think that my parents were hiding refugees of a secret war in the attic. On multiple occasions. Sometimes after I reached legal adulthood.
I am unable to look under the beds at hotel rooms because I’ve seen a film where someone hid a dead prostitute under a bed (and read a Snopes column about occasions where this actually happened). That’s just a normal - if juvenile - reaction to a scary movie, right? No, here is why this specifically belongs to moron brain. I am not scared of dead bodies. I am scared of having to tell someone that there is a dead body. As if being the first person to find out would make it somehow my fault.
Moron brain has never made me do anything harmful, it’s just made me not want to talk about things. I have a feeling that this is going to get me in trouble someday. I mean, what if I’m a victim of assault? Why is it that telling people about being assaulted scares me more than being assaulted?
I’m not asking for psychatric help - I already have all the help I need. (And yes, I know moron brain is probably best known by the name of generalized anxiety.) But I did just want to share some tales of moron brain and invite anyone else to join in the fun and support one another if their brains are also housing secret moron brains inside them.
Moron brain tries to count to infinity in the middle of the night. It’s not really like starting at 1 and going on and on, but occasionally I’ll be half asleep (and desperately wanting to be fully asleep) and my brain will invent some nonsensical equation or system or something in which it’s trying to comprehend and/or deal with infinity, or at least really, really big numbers/large amounts of items. It kind of freaks me out sometimes.
This is related to the slightly obsessive compulsive way my brain will latch onto a word or a phrase or a song lyric and repeat it over and over again, sometimes for days. It’s the mother of all earworms, and when I’m tired enough (which happens a lot; I’m an insomniac, if you hadn’t guessed!) it almost seems physically painful. It’s permanent background noise that just never moves on beyond that one point/phrase.
Mine told me that eating a whole pizza in one evening was, if not a good plan, at least okay - no greasy pizza box left on the counter, no leftovers crowding the fridge. I’m pretty small and felt full most of the next day and won’t do that again.
Also: that I am being rude when I cross the street and that people in cars are annoyed with me. I look both ways, follow the walk/don’t walk lights, and walk quickly, but I still feel like people are impatient with me and that they ought to be.
EDIT: mine fixates on songs that I don’t know very well. I might only know one line, or I know maybe half the words or less. It’s like my moron brain thinks if it restarts the song for me over and over it will finally reveal to me the super-secret words! Sometimes it’s even a song in a language that I don’t speak (part of an opera I only heard once, etc)… moron brain, do you really think my real brain is that magical?
My moron brain once thought I had died in an accident (that never happened, not even a near miss) and that I was a ghost who didn’t know it was dead. It made me feel anxious for the rest of the day.
Comedian Dana Gould once commented that he wished there was an opera singer who lived in his closet who could come out and sing, ‘‘Mistaaaaaaaaake!’’ right before he did something stupid.
Wouldn’t that be nice? I could really benefit from Mistake Guy.
My moron brain fixates on things that really do not matter at all. Ever. For instance, my fiance is diabetic. My brain will literally keep me up at night worrying what will happen in the event that we survive a nuclear war. Where will he find insulin? How can we keep him alive at that point? You know why this doesn’t matter? Because we live in New York City. In the event of a nuclear war we won’t even leave corpses behind as they will have been vaporized in the nuclear blast. Doesn’t stop my brain from worrying about it though.
My moron brain is also completely afraid of being thought of as odd. The other day I was deeply engrossed in a book and thought I missed my subway stop so I got up and stood near the door. As we pulled up I realized I was about 10 stops early but instead of just sitting back down I actually got off the train and stood and waited for the next one so that no one would think I was weird for standing up and sitting back down. The subway is regularly ridden by people who haven’t bathed in a month or more, people trying to break dance, and people screaming about Jesus but I was really worried that my standing up would be seen as strange. As I stood on the platform I knew I was being silly but I figured I wasn’t in a hurry so I was okay with a little silly.
My moron brain doesn’t let go of things. It continually reminds me of a random selection of mistakes and errors that I have made, not necessarily recently even. And it doesn’t let me forget about women I’ve lost chances with, ever. In romantic comedies, that’s hopeful and you know there will be a reconciliation. In real life, it’s somewhere between pathetic and stalkerish, depending on how hard I try to reconnect.
My moron brain also does stupid things like dropping drawings all over the floor in front of a client.
My moron brain just let me down again. I wrote a long, very descriptive email to a co-worker explaining what I thought was a complicated issue with one of our building leases and asking for some data that the co-worker was privy to, so I could figure out this extremely vexing problem. I was very descriptive in my email so that she would get it, without being so condescending that she thought I was talking down to her.
Her response basically informed me that I had misunderstood which party in the building lease was the “landlord” and which was the “tenant”.
Sometimes I wonder how I actually do this for a living, what with my moron brain, and all.
Mine does that too, especially stuff I did in the 80’s, then I widen out my focus and realize bad judgment was rampant in the 80’s and try to cut myself a break.
I do the word repeating thing too, and I also find myself repeating a number, let’s say 8, for no discernible reason.
I could fill this thread with examples. Heck, I could probably fill the rest of my life with examples.
I think my brain is the reverse - it’s mostly moron brain, with a small bit of ‘manages okay’ brain tucked away deep in the middle.
Example. I decide to go and do the weekly shopping. I leave the house with everthing I need, car keys, re-usable shopping bag (because they have stopped issuing free plastic bags) and so on. I get in the car. I put on some enjoyable music. I drive two miles to the big supermarket. Get out. Walk into supermarket. And that, my friends, is when I realise I haven’t brought my money, my wallet or any means of payment whatsoever.
Imagine about five incidents like this per day, and you will begin to understand that my life is essentially once continuous battle to overcome the limitations of a brain that just doesn’t work very well. It’s a wonder I’m allowed out into the community.
I have a similar, but slightly different problem, in that I have a lazy brain instead of a moron brain.
My normal brain will sit there and look at the bills sitting next to the computer, all of which i can pay online in 5 minutes, and have plenty of money to pay, and think I should definitely pay these.
My lazy brain will preempt normal brain and think, eh… do it tomorrow. Repeatedly. Until tomorrow is the day they cut off the internet. Again. Or the disconnect notice comes for the power.
My stupid brain was convinced that using my wife’s expensive fabric scissors to remove the stripped out phillips screw in the kitchen sink fitting would be much easier than the long walk down to the basement to get a proper screwdriver, a tool is a tool right?
Luckily smart brain caught that one before it hit the printing presses.
Some friends and I refer to this as our “mental goalies”. The imagery is that of a hockey goalie facing the back of one’s throat, crouching just under the uvula, whose job it is to block all the stupid from emerging from one’s mouth.
It supplies a good way to (privately) slam each other, while remaining friendly; all it takes is a “He shoots! He scores!” to get the point across. Also, every once in awhile, one of us might pipe up, “Whoa. Kick save! And a beauty!” – sometimes, trying to guess what inanity we were just saved from hearing provides its own entertainment.
Eighteen. Or sixty-two. Those are the two numbers that I fixate on, for no reason that I can tell. I think I just like the way they sound, but it gets annoying after a while.
I fix on names that I like the sound of, too. One of my favourite aspects of watching hockey, other than the game itself, is some of the players’ names; the Anaheim Ducks happen to have a roster that’s incredibly fun to say! Chipchura, Koivu, Selanne, Wisniewski, Bobby Ryan (must be said in full!)…I seriously watch hockey games and just repeat names at the TV. My husband finds this quite entertaining! I’m glad he’s a patient man, though I think he’s also glad that Ducks games don’t come on very often on the east coast!