Well gosh, if all brain farts are so pretty, maybe I wouldn't mind so much. photo credit: jbartand.blogspot.com

I’m sure we’ve all had them.  One moment you’re in the kitchen looking for something and then you stop suddenly.  What were you looking for?  It has escaped you and you stand there, bewildered and confused, trying to remember why you went there in the first place.  Or perhaps you sit down at your computer and all of a sudden forget how to type.  You start moving your fingers over the keyboard only to find a jumble of nonsensical letters coming out in streams.  Then there are the times when your mouth tries to move too fast for its own good, causing you to slur your words together and start babbling.

What went wrong?

It's not easy to get to Grand Master with 5 stars! Now I've got to fight to make up for my brain fart.

I guess part of human imperfection is these mistakes that we make, where a short-circuit in our neural synapses makes us lose our train of thought or forget an age-old habit.  Seems like some of our “mail” gets lost during delivery, or re-routed to the wrong address occasionally.  Such was an experience I had when I took a break from being glued to my computer too long, then returned only to find I’d forgotten how to use the controls associated with playing Tetris online.  I’ve been working on two-player levels, competing against other Tetris kings and queens around the world, so it certainly was not a good time to slow down my pace to try to regain the motor skill speed that I had managed to achieve.  It cost me a few losses, but after a few games I started to pick up on it again.  It was the most awkward sensation though, and reminded me of when you get all tongue-tied and sometimes your tongue just feels too big for your mouth.  You trip all over it attempting to pronounce some simple words and have to stop yourself, take a pause, and restart again.

Another time when your brain seems to shut down momentarily is when you into autopilot mode.  You’re doing something so familiar that you let your guard down, stop focusing, and suddenly you realize that’s not what you meant to do.  This can be quite common when navigating familiar streets around your home, where you park yourself in the lot of the local grocery store and start to get out only to realize that you meant to go to the bank instead.  Or maybe you’re typing and as your train of thought wanders, your typing starts to include terms similar to but not quite the ones you meant to.  It could have been a word spelled nearly the same, one that is typed out with similar fingers, or even one that you heard in a conversation near you that you picked up on.  Oh the silly mistakes we make when our brains get overloaded with information and stop processing at capacity.

It’s a humbling reminder that the world is full of its quirks that will never be completely fixed.  And neither should they be.  Many a happy accident has occurred and surely many more will continue to!  It’s not always a bad thing to be less than “perfect.”