MY LEAKY BRAIN
A brain is a marvelous piece of equipment, our whole body is a miracle and nobody will ever convince me that it came to be by anything but a divine hand.
I’m unconvinced by the Adam and Eve story and also by the theory of us coming out of the sea as some sort of slime and evolving into what we are today. The big bang theory is probably nearer to the truth but what happened after the earth cooled is a mystery. My husband has a very scientific mind, I am more spiritual so we just agree to disagree, (even though I am right!) However we came into being, we are certainly a magnificent creation and the brain is a marvellous machine.
Living in a small town makes my face recognizable by many, thanks to many years of catering to the public and to Oliver Daily News, which flashes my face once a week. I sometimes wince when I see the lined, white haired individual, grinning at me when I open my laptop. (ed. note – You look great!)
Lunching with a Penticton pal, in an Oliver restaurant, nearly always is interrupted by one of the ODN readers. My friend is astonished by my fame (or infamy), but I tell her that this is a very small town and almost everyone reads ODN as it gives us the daily news, as it happens.
One of the questions I get asked is “where do you get your ideas”? Well, obviously they are either memories that waft in and out of my mind or some incident that has caught me off guard or I found amusing. Our daily lives may seem routine but really, they are full of wonderful little surprises that beg to be put down on paper. If they are not interesting to all readers, that is a shame but these little incidents are what make life worth living and the smallest thing has humour involved if only we look for it.
The world around us is filled with annoyances that seem to be stumbling blocks, so much red tape involved with everything, so many awful things reported on the news, politicians who cannot be believed and bad things happening to good people. If we did not see the humour in things we might as well give up now. Let’s face it, if we did not laugh at the lunacy that is abundant in Washington, Korea and Russia at this time, we would have no hope for a future.
However, putting words on paper is not always easy. I think maybe my brain has a leak as it sometimes just takes time-out. Writing a cheque a few days ago (yes I still write cheques now and again), I stumbled over my first name. I have never been comfortable with Patricia as a name, it just doesn’t flow well when writing it. I nearly always stop at the second i, it is just weird to write Patricia and I nearly always have a slight space after the first i.
My name is not the only word I have trouble with. I have sometimes stopped in the middle of something so simple as ‘the’ because it looks wrong. Now and again I get the awful feeling that dementia is hiding round the next corner, just waiting for me to let my guard down before it takes over my life. Before it gets me I intend to keep on praying about my concerns for the world around us and continue to laugh at myself and the silly things that make up our daily life.