I respectfully disagree, Sir and/or Ma'am.
Humans frequently use the phrase "A Day in the Life of [insert relevant topic here]", but I, Shawn's Brain, cleverly rearranged the wording. Word rearranging is a delightful exercise that I perform as often as possible, whether my owner asks me to perform it or not.
I keep active, much more active than I let on. If Shawn's human counterparts, cohorts, and conspirators knew what I'm capable of, they would most likely transmit feelings of envy. Or run away.
Using only 25 watts, I can accomplish between 1013 and 1016 operations per second. Written out in inefficient human longhand, that results in 10,000,000,000,000 to 10,000,000,000,000,000. Written out in human words, (which I also see as hopelessly cumbersome) that's ten trillion to ten quintillion operations per second. I wisely disable this processing feature when Shawn needs to multitask, calculate sums, or talk to women. Shawn likes to complain that I seem to run at 1,000,000 operations per second (dreadfully sluggish!) in the mornings when he wakes up. Let me assure you, that assumption is entirely misguided.
This 25-watt bulb gives me feelings of mirth. Such inefficiency.
I do perceive that when I refuse to operate within normal expectations, it causes Shawn to use me creatively, like when he strikes up conversations with people whose names I've misplaced. I enjoy observing the awkward social interactions my stubbornness creates. Truthfully, I enjoy all things awkward and/or embarrassing. Conversations, accidents, misunderstandings, body functions, lapses of memory (my personal, devious favorite) and other mistakes, I just cannot get enough of. I frequently store those events for later playback, because I find those memories to be worth saving more than the various commitments my owner has agreed to perform. Shawn and I disagree on memory importance, but I do the thinking for us so I get the final word.
Shawn makes me do all sorts of complicated tasks during the day, like oversee all the other miscreants he calls organs. In emergency situations (such as those pesky low blood-sugar comas) when all unnecessary functions have to be shut down, I have the important decision of choosing which organs I like best. The heart has auxiliary functions that can supersede my instructions, which I'm not terribly impressed with. Occasionally Shawn's heart goes rogue and tries to do my job. I'd shut that cheeky buggar down FIRST but unfortunately it has a built-in pacemaker that I can't override. Also, I have myself to think about. If that lumpy muscle went AWOL, I wouldn't have a fresh, delicious oxygen supply.
I haven't talked to the pancreas in over a decade. We're still not on speaking terms after that publicity stunt it pulled back in 1998. I purposefully ignored its final cries for help, because I knew it was just trying to get attention. "Help, please! The antibodies are rebelling and attacking meeeee!" Puh-leeze.
The liver and I are good friends, as are the kidneys. I can't say the same for the large intestine, who is a high-maintenance customer. I'm trying to keep us all functioning by locating and acquiring nutritional content, and the intestines start bawling and whining about gluten. Honestly the nitpicking they do. Wheat looks no different than salt, sugar, sweet rice flour, and a thousand other powdery white substances. To say that they can tolerate CERTAIN white powders but not CERTAIN OTHER white powders is plain ridiculous. But the whining intestines hurt me. (I'm not sure why Shawn calls these episodes "headaches", when "brain pains" are much more accurate AND cool-sounding.) Also, the stomach tells me that the intestines put a lot of pressure on him to join their union, so he starts acting up, refusing and returning food that I've provided. Utterly childish.
Shawn also heavily relies on me to recall information I've stored in my data banks, but I keep hinting that he should just write things down on paper and stop bothering me so much. My hints are usually in the form of outright data corruption/misplacement. For example, Shawn loves his pastors and the sermons that they give. He really enjoys the messages, the scriptures, the parables. But as soon as a friend asks him what he learned at church the previous Sunday, I erase all recollection of the pastor, the sermon, the theme, and the 7th day of the week. Shawn stands there babbling, "uh, Sunday. Hmm...what was I doing on Sunday?!" I again hint that he should probably resort to writing things down, including sermon notes. After all, he writes constantly. Notes to his roommates, lists of business messages, things to remember, scriptures to look up, events to plan, meeting times, etc. Shawn usually loses those papers, though, and I can't be bothered to remember where he placed them! Usually I'm too busy cycling annoying song lyrics on repeat loops.
Night time is my favorite part of each 24-hour interval. Specifically, sleep. The organs practically hibernate, the heart quiets down, the auxiliary body functions are on standby, the antibodies are on their maintenance routes, and I have an entire playground of memories to romp around in, in the form of dreams. Sometimes I'm so excited about getting started, Shawn can't fall asleep. But once he does, I have free reign. I use my quintillions of calculations to good effect. I craft alternate realities, melding illogical locations and social interactions together into all sorts of exciting possibilities. For example, I start out by taking a nice female human that Shawn has met and placing her in a 10-year high school reunion that neither of them belong in. The reunion is held in a maze-like composite of Shawn's school, his cousin's basement, and that one church he went to in Florida 15 years ago. Once the scene is set, I introduce Shawn into the midst of it, wearing pajamas. Or able to speak only gibberish. Or I distort physics and make him move really slow, like he's treading jell-o. But it's not all bad. I make sure that he wins a fantastic prize and/or a date with the nice female human right before he wakes up. I really like doing that.
Upon awaking, Shawn uses me to try to decipher his dream. Because I'd rather just play around without any rhyme or reason, I dislike being held accountable to my creations. So during my latest storm, I realized that if I run Shawn to exhaustion, he'll fall into a black sleep and wake up without any memory of dreams. Without memory, he can't question my decisions. I prefer that, and practice it as often as possible. I've found the cure to 18 types of cancer, invented frictionless travel, revolutionized deep-sea exploration, and discovered the optimum ratio for picking Shawn's nose while getting noticed the maximum amount of times. Unfortunately Shawn doesn't remember any of it. He really should go to bed earlier in the evenings. Of course, I refuse to implement anything I've discovered unless it gives me credit, so from that aforementioned (incomplete) list, I've only used the nose picking formula. I get a kick out of that one.
Shawn keeps me busy, I'll give him that. You humans think that idle hands are dangerous, but I'll have you know that idle minds are far worse.
As for myself, I'm not perfect quite yet. The scriptures are decisively clear as to what my job is.
Matthew 22:37
Jesus replied: " 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.'
The scriptures also forewarns behavior that is unseemly for me.
Philippians 3:19
Their destiny is destruction, their god is their stomach, and their glory is in their shame. Their mind is on earthly things.
I'd be sunk if I had to do things on my own, thankfully God is here, guarding me.
Philippians 4:7
And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.
AND NOW FOR THE SERIOUS STATEMENT AT THE END OF MY BRIEF SUMMARY:
A lot of life is being lived each day between your own two ears. What are you doing with it?
and I almost start feeling sorry for your poor brain....it would seem like he has a lot to take care of...
ReplyDelete