The comedian Jeanne Robertson always refers to her husband as "Left Brain". In many of her hilarious shows she will talk about "Left Brain" and the things he does. She and I are kindred spirits although I must say she is often a lot kinder to the opposite sex than I am.
This blog has been forming in my mind for a few days now so this morning I did some Google searching to see just what information I could find regarding our brains and how they work. Here is a very watered down version of what I found. . . the front of our brain controls body movement, personality, problem-solving, concentration and planning. . . the middle of our brain governs emotions and long-term memory . . . the back of the brain deals with balance and coordination. Those are the basics of the brain front to back. As for left and right, well, people with a dominant left side of their brain tend to be more logical and people who favor their right brain are more creative.
My conclusion from all of this is I have a strong frontal lobe because I am good at problem solving and planning. The middle of my brain isn't as strong because I can't remember shit and most of the time I am an emotional mess. As for the back of my brain, well, that just depends on the day although my balance is quite good I am not coordinated. (I discovered that fact when, years ago, I tried to do aerobics and keep falling over my feet and the feet of everyone around me. If the group was sliding left I was sliding right. It was not pretty. I gave up on all exercise shortly after that). I also think I am a fairly even split between Left Brain and Right Brain. I am logical and I like to think I am creative. I can figure out how to get a couch through a door way and I enjoy arts and crafts. All in all I guess my brain is working fairly evenly on all counts.
As for The Man, I have concluded he does not HAVE a brain ! None, nothing, nada, nien ! This conclusion comes from the happenings of the past week when The Man's nephew came to put in a new bathroom door. The job involved taking out the old door and its frame and the surrounding molding. It is much more of a job than I would ever attempt but I KNOW I can't do it so I would never try. But for the past 2 months we have been trying to get someone here to do this work and no one wants the job. And so we asked Nephew if he thought he could do it and he said "yes". He had some difficulty on Tuesday getting the frame straight so The Man stepped in to help. I stood in the kitchen watching the 2 of them try to figure out how to get the door to hang straight. I could see exactly where the problem was but knew better than to offer any advice. By that evening the door was still hanging crooked, Nephew had gone home to drink and The Man sat at the kitchen table trying to figure out how to fix the problem.
Let me pause here to tell you about my father and his brother . . . my dad could fix anything but he would usually get to the simple solution by way of China. What I mean is that nothing was a "simple" fix. Hanging a mirror could involved major renovations to a wall where I would just stick a nail in the same wall and hang the mirror.
The Man appears to be the same way. Nothing is simple or he just can't see the simple answer. By Wednesday morning The Man was still agonizing over how to get the door to hang straight when I took a chance and made a suggestion. Naturally his first reaction was, "No, that won't work!" End of discussion. But then I could see the wheels were turning in his brain and an hour later when Nephew showed up The Man was telling Nephew what to do. We now have a new bathroom door that shuts and even locks. The 2 workers were very pleased with themselves and I just started thinking about how I could turn this into a blog.
In case you thing there may be hope for our younger generation let me stop you right there. While The Man and Nephew were struggling with the door I was in the basement with our 2 neighbor boys cleaning our all the trash that was down there. (Not my idea of a fun day but this was one of the many things The Man had on his "To Do" list for the summer. Included in the trash to be removed was a large, old kitchen table. One of those ones from the 1950's with the metal legs. It was heavy so the boys had to struggle to get it up the basement stairs. When they got to the top of the stairs and had to get the table through the back door they were stuck. Literally. I watched from the bottom of the steps as the 2 of them tried to squeeze the table straight through but the door way was inches smaller than the width of the table. Before I could come up the stairs to show them how to turn the table The Man arrived to direct the boys. His suggestions were as futile as the boys so that at one point the table was actually wedged in the door way with no hope of going in or out. The boys managed to pop the table loose like a cork from a bottle but it was still INSIDE the house. I took pity on them all and told them to try turning the table on its side, put 2 legs out the door, swing the table sideways and then follow out with the back legs. Easy Peasy. At first they ignored me but after struggling a few more minutes they figured it out and the table made it out to the garage.
I don't know if it was because I was an only child and had to figure things out for myself or if I inherited this ability from my mom but where ever it came from I'm glad those parts of my brain are functioning. My brain parts that control the ability to do calculus or learn a foreign language never formed and that is just fine with me as long as I can figure out how to get a 5 pound chicken into a 2 quart pot.
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