Wasted Brain Cells

Joe's new house is about thirty minutes west of mine, and so, if you put the radio with the broken antenna in just the right place, and push the tip of the antenna against the metal handle of a broom leaning against the door, you can pick up a radio station out of Topeka that plays country music classics.

When I don't bump the radio and reduce the music to static (I haven't quite mastered the trick of the proper antenna / radio / broom placement), I've been enjoying hearing songs I haven't heard in ten or twenty years.

As I was painting and singing along last Friday, I realized I'd been working for five solid hours, listening to the radio the whole time, and had only come across one or two songs I didn't know. For some of the songs, I knew most or all of the words. (A rousing chorus of 'Delta Dawn', anyone?) For all but those few, I at least knew the chorus.

It was fun, but it's a profligate waste of brain cells. Do you suppose, if I didn't have so many cells taken up by the second (and third) verses to Christmas songs, I'd have been able to pull up a few more names of people I hadn't seen for a while at the event I was volunteering for last night? Or, perhaps, if I couldn't sing all of 'Country Roads', I might be able to remember the different ways java can instantiate variables when faced with the question on a test, which would enable me to go back and get another programming job.

On the other hand, perhaps the words to 'Yesterday', fill the place where I can't quite remember the pain of the weeks following the operation that removed my breasts five years ago. Do the words to 'The Servant Song' stand in stead of the memories of the months immediately following mom's death?

Funny, the things we remember.
A blessing, some of the things we forget.