A couple of years ago I was at a Phil Lesh and Friends show with my friend Dave. It was the first show on that tour, and we had been wondering who would be playing in the band. When the band came out, I was trying to place each one with an instrument, and I had figured out everyone but the bass player.
Me: Hey Dave, who’s play bass on this tour?
<pause for Dave to consider just how dumb a question this is>
Dave: Um, Phil.
All these car-related brain farts reminded me of one of my own:
It was mid-winter and I’d been working very late and was pretty tired. I headed out to where I usually park in the lot, and tried unlocking the car door with keyless entry. No response from the car. And I thought to myself, “Oh no! The battery is dead! Did I leave my headlights on this morning? Crap!”
Then I tried manually unlocking the door. And the key wouldn’t turn. I assumed, for some reason, that the engine key is not the door key, and couldn’t remember when I’d ever used a door key for my car. I totally freaked out that this point, ran inside near tears, and called my husband (long since home from his day). He picked me up at the front door to my building, then asked to see the car.
ME: “There it is. Hey! How did that license plate get onto my car?!”
HIM: “What?”
ME: “That’s not my license plate. Someone put a strange plate on… wait. Wait a minute.”
HIM: “Don’t tell me.”
ME: “I am so sorry. I forgot I moved my car to the first row at lunch. This is someone else’s car.”
In my own defense, it was another dark blue Saturn SL2. But still. I have yet to live that one down.
A while ago, I could not believe that there was a state named Iowa. I thought it was a figment of my imagination and had to look on a map. I have no idea why it was Iowa that my brain tried to deny, but there it is.
I hesitated to post this one until I read everyone else’s brainfarts and felt a bit better about it.
I was eating a hamburger once and noticed that the tomato had gotten smashed and had become basically just tomato goo on my burger. “Mmmm,” thought I. “Someone should figure out a way to smash up tomatoes and make some kind of tomato paste for burgers because it’s really good this way!”
…
:smack: :smack: :smack:
I have a friend who enters her “personal PIN number” into the “automatic ATM machine.”
That’s not so bad, as long as you didn’t think, “and stir in a bunch of corn syrup with it” too.
I hand my cell phone to my dad.
Pat my pocket.
Where’s my phone?!
I combine these two. If someone asks me how old I am I ususally have to do the math, but for some reason I have to look at my watch first, and it most definitely does not display the date, let alone the year.
When I was 11, I had a king-sized bain fart. I was reading a Nancy Drew book that either took place in Georgia or a Georgian mansion. And that’s what confused me— Georgian? Gregorian? Georgia? George? It started to reverberate in my mind, around and around and around. Why didn’t I just keep reading? I dunno…brain fart.
Hours later I slid up next to my dad and said, in a low voice, “Dad? <heavy pause> Is there such a place as…<heavy pause> …Geor-gia?”
He looks at me strangely, “Y-e-e-e-s-s-s-s…?”
Me: “Oh! Good!” And I waltzed off, mind free from the tyranny of Georgian Gregorian mansions in Georgia.
I just had one this very morning. I am the assistant to two mental health counselors at an institute of higher learning. I was speaking to one of the counselors to let him know someone had cancelled her appointment because she is no longer interested in “um, that thing you do, um geez, I forget the name.” Never mind that the words “Counseling Center” were on the door in front of me.
When I mean to say, “I was just thinking out loud,” I say, “I was just talking out loud.” My husband always looks at me weird. Most of the time I don’t even hear that I said it wrong!
Visited, very possibly, by a girl named George, no less.
There was a gas station on the corner of the street down the road from where I lived… probably less than a mile. I used to go to it all the time. Anyway, I pulled left out of it on to the road, but instead of going to the right lane, I stayed in the left lane. So I pull up to the intersection where I have to make a left, and the light is red. I’m looking at the light, and the intersection, and suddenly I wonder, “Why can’t we make left turns on reds? I’m not crossing any lanes of traffic or anything.” So I look both ways, and make a nice left turn from the left lane of the road I was on to the left lane of the road I was turning on. I drove about two more blocks this way (fortunately the whole thing was in a small town late at night so no cars) before I suddenly realized that the reason everything looked weird was because I was on the wrong side of the road.
Oh, and I used to forget how to spell ‘the’ all the time. Thu? Tha? Tho?
I notice a lot of “inventions” my brain comes up with when camping. Once a friend and I were walking down a trail after dark on a new moon (i.e., very dark. no see path). We had some votive candles, so we each took one and lit it, but candlelight kinda hurts your eyes if you can see it directly, and is useless in such a dark situation. We quickly discovered that placing the candles on our heads gave us nice, indirect light that we could then see the path with.
“Huh,” my brain goes. “Someone whould invent a hat or helmet that you can put a candle in. Or maybe a candle holder with a cover and a handle.”
:smack:
I’ve been working at this university for 4 years. In order to make a long distance call and have it bill to the account I work on, there is a specific code I must enter. It’s been the same code the entire time I’ve been here. A few weeks ago I sent a fax and accidentally keyed in the wrong phone number. When I cleared it out of the fax memory so I could refax it, I could not remember the long distance code to save my life. I had to sit down at my desk, do a game, and then deliberately not look at the phone while I keyed in the code. Fortunately, that time my fingers remembered the code.
I’ve definitely had embarrassing brain farts as well, but I don’t remember them right now.
I was in college. I walked out of my first class of the day, and had no idea where to go next. It was a month into the semester. I had the same first two classes every day, so I’d done this 20 times already. I couldn’t even think of who else was in the class with me.
For weeks after that, I was completely paranoid about forgetting what class to go to, and I carried a copy of my schedule in my wallet, including the building and room number.
The wierd part? That was 25 years ago, and I had a nightmare just last month about being at school and not knowing what to do or where to go.
When I was younger, my boyfriend and I both worked for the power company, inspecting the lines for tree limbs, etc. One day I had a gnarly hike to do, it went from one small mountain down to a creek and up to another mountain top. I enlisted the boyfriend to go with me and make sure I didn’t fall down, die or go missing. So together we park my car at the endpoint, and drive around to where we are going to start. The plan is to hike to my car, then I can drive him back around to his truck at the end of the day.
It was a beautiful day, we packed a lunch. There wasn’t much work to actually be done, so we really just enjoyed the hike down. Then, as we were crossing the dry creek bed at the very bottom, I suddenly yell, OH SHIT!!! I realized I had left my car keys on the seat in his truck…because I was trying to pack lightly and I just didn’t think I’d need them. DUH. We ended up completing the hike and then I hitch-hiked and caught a ride on the back of a motorcycle (with no helmet) and had to drive the boyfriend’s truck out to where I had left my car.
So, so stupid. SO STUPID! :smack:
This one I’ll blame entirely on the fact that I was reading this thread earlier today.
Just a while ago, I was going to take a shower. Took off my socks, rolled them up, planned to throw them into the hamper.
While thinking about some work issue, I opened the lid, threw the socks in, and heard a splash.
Splash? What the…?
Yes, ladies and gentleman, that’s right. I had thrown them into the toilet. It took a while for the fact to sink in before I started laughing out loud.
I have that dream a lot! In addition to not knowing where to go, I’ll also forget some of my books, forget to go to class for a few weeks and have to catch up, and go to the wrong class. It’s maddening!
I’ve got a couple more brain farts:
I work at 9:00 am and I usually wake up at 7:55 with the alarm, but a couple of weeks ago, I woke up before the alarm went off. So I got out of bed, took my shower and did all of the usual things in getting ready to leave for work. I got in my car, drove to work and saw that the janitor was still there. He asked me what I was doing there and I jokingly said, “I work here”, thinking he was just making conversation. He said, “You’re early. It’s not even 8:00 yet.” So I checked the clock, and sure enough, I must have gotten up at 7:05, instead of 7:55. That was a two cups of coffee day! :smack:
When I get home from work, my husband is already there, but for some reason, I sometimes go over to the light in the corner of the living room to turn it on–but it’s already on, so I end up turning it off. And every time I do it, my husband stands there and lets me just so he can laugh at his daft wife.
Forgetting words, etc, is SOP for me these days because I AM an OldBroad. but my other big issue is with dates.
Sometime in the late 1990’s I put 1968 on a check. No hesitation, it just came out of my pen.
Last week I was paying bills - wrote almost a dozen checks and on two of them put the month as 8 rather than 10. No idea where it came from on only 2 of them - no problem with the rest.
My best brain fart however was the time (and I was only in my 20’s at the time) I locked myself out of my running car. VERY embarrassing.
