The brain’s crazy path

The white truck two parking spaces from me rumbled to life. The driver in jeans and blue shirt with his name over his left pocket seemed eager to leave the parking lot so I let him go ahead of me. I was in another place anyway. 

As soon as the guy started his engine and I got the strong whiff of diesel fuel, I was back to being a little kid going to my first real professional football game to see the Baltimore Colts. We lived far from Baltimore, but it was easier for the organizers with my brother’s football league to get tickets to than the Pittsburgh Steelers or Philadelphia Eagles. 

I remember little about the game at Memorial Stadium or even the Colts, this was before they moved to Cleveland and well before the Ravens moved into the city. However, I remember the diesel bus, my first ride on a motorcoach with a bathroom on the bus, and the feeling of excitement that surrounded the day. 

The mind is an amazing thing. I was in the middle of my day and just like that fifty some years passed, and I was a little kid on my first lengthy bus ride. It’s amazing how that works. I’ve been thinking lately about how one thing will lead to another. Sometimes it leads us to common things we all might think about, or even specific memories unknown to anyone else. 

The brain works in a crazy way. It sends and receives chemical and electrical signals throughout the body. Different signals control different processes, and your brain interprets each. For example, some make you feel tired, while others make you feel pain.

I smell diesel fuel and I’m taken back to Baltimore. Someone smells the same thing and crinkles their nose. 

It’s that way with a lot of things. 

–I was driving yesterday and a cherry red Ford Mustang caught my eye. Ford developed the Mustang in 1964 and it’s still in production almost sixty years later. When first released, Ford hoped to sell 100,000 cars in the first year. Ford made such an impression on the public that it sold 22,000 on its first day. Over the course of the first 18-months of the vehicle’s availability, Ford sold one million Mustangs. 

They remain a popular car, but I wasn’t thinking about any of that when I saw the car. Instead, I was thinking back to a cold snowy day in college and a white mustang. It was the middle of the week. I forget where I was headed, but I remember hating the idea of leaving the warmth of my dorm. 

I hesitated and waited as long as I could, until I could wait no more and bundled up and headed out into the storm. I cut through the parking lot to try to reduce the wind that cut to the bone. It gave little reprieve. There seemed to be no one out. I was surprised when I came across two guys in a white mustang. They asked if I would give them a push. Their car wasn’t starting.

I should have demanded a ride, but they were headed in a different direction and they feared the car stalling out if they had to come back and get me. In any event, I did my good deed for the day. And every time I see a Mustang, even after all these years, I still think of that cold, cold day. 

–I waited recently with my wife in the hospital. She had to have a minor procedure. She hates hospitals. Most people do. For me, though, hospitals bring back a fun memory.

When I was a kid, I fell from the monkey bars, nearly cracked open my skull and had to spend two weeks in the hospital. The doctor had me on strict orders to stay in my bed. I couldn’t get in and out. Fortunately, I don’t remember much of the accident. It’s a faint blur. I remember looking up at people, but the rest is fuzzy.

Instead, I remember the toy milk truck that I was given to play with in bed. It was the coolest little thing. It had a little driver dressed all in white and with a little hat and individual milk bottles that screwed in and out. You could take the truck apart and put it back together again.

Of course, the pieces would fall out of my bed and onto the floor and the nurses were sick and tired of me hitting the call button for them to come to the room. Yes, I was an annoying little bugger. In the years since, I’ve spent more than my share of time in hospitals, but each time I can’t help but think fondly about Milk Truck Driver Jim and my old Dairy Truck.

Oh, yes, the brain is a crazy and fascinating thing.