I have a fail brain. It’s obvious in the post A Case Of The Mumbles and every post labeled with the tag Brain Fail. My brain was severely smacked by a stage light when I was younger leaving me with gaping holes in my memory, both short-term and long-term.

But I have adapted. My fail brain and I are in détente. We have come to an accord. However, there are times I wonder just what’s going on up there. Perhaps the brain has secretly signed a treaty with the mouth or hand, and they’re plotting to overthrow me. In any event, my brain and I don’t always get along. Here are some examples of what I mean:

Exhibit A

Last night, when I got home from work, I attempted to use the clicker for my car on my front door. I stood there for a minute clicking and getting frustrated because my house door still stubbornly remained locked. It was only when I heard the click-click coming from my car that I realized that this thing would never open my front door.

Sadly, that was not the first time I tried opening my house with my car key. With this same clicker, I have opened the trunk of my car instead of my door more times than I can count, and I have tried unlocking my doors with the lock button and vice versa. I’m really better off with just a plain old key.

Exhibit B

I make a pot of coffee every morning without fail. In today’s modern world, making coffee isn’t really that difficult. It requires three ingredients: coffee, water and heat. In my case, it involves coffee, water, heat from a coffeemaker, a coffee filter and a coffee grinder since we grind our coffee ourselves.

About 50% of the time, I manage to grind coffee, add water, replace the filter with a new one, put fresh coffee in, and turn the coffee pot on. The other 50% of the time, I fail entirely. I put the filter in without adding coffee, or worse, I put the coffee in without a filter. I forget to add water. I forget to turn the coffee pot on. Sometimes, I make coffee the correct way and then leave the house without it. This morning, I threw the new coffee filter into the trash instead of the old one.

Most of the time, I don’t remember to turn it on, so you can forget about remembering to turn it off. Thankfully, it has an auto shut off otherwise I would have killed it by now. In my defense, I haven’t had any coffee yet when I’m making coffee.

Exhibit C

I’ve lived in my neighborhood for about eight years and I still get lost. I will either not pay attention, miss a turn and then panic because I don’t know where I am, or I will genuinely not know how to get from point A to point B because I usually get to point B from point C, not from point A. Going from his house to the dog park, Male once said, if you go the other way, it’s shorter, but since you finally remembered this way after months of conditioning like a homing pigeon, we’ll leave it be.

Exhibit D

I take a pill every morning, or at least, I’m supposed to. I had to tie my pill taking to putting on my ear jewelry otherwise, I will forget entirely. If at some point later in the day, I realize that I don’t have heavy stainless steel things in my earholes, I know I haven’t taken my medication:

Those things are heavy. I don’t know exactly how much they weigh, but it’s enough to notice when I am not wearing them, yet not heavy enough to notice I’m not wearing them before I leave the house.

Exhibit E

I continually misspell the same words. For example, when I did a search for the image for Exhibit D, I typed “0 guage” for the nth time in my life. The search engine asked me if I meant 0 gauge. I said, yes, that’s what I meant. I knew that. Yes sirree.

Exhibit F

I take my dog to the dog park several times a week. At the entrance, they have two doors like so:

The sign says, “Please close gate behind you BEFORE opening next gate.” The point of the one door at a time system is to keep dogs from getting out. At my dog park, one gate opens towards me, while the other gate opens away from me. They look identical so you can’t tell which opens which way from a glance. I have never been able to remember which door opens which way, so most of the time, I’m trying to force a door the opposite way it was designed to swing… twice. And then I repeat the same confusing process on the way out. I have only been taking my dog to that park several times a week for two years. Maybe by the time she’s five, I’ll have it down.

Exhibit G

Male and I have coffee at the local coffee shop a lot. We trade off buying. He drinks the same thing, but it’s a complicated drink with at least five different words I have to say. I had to have him text it to me because I couldn’t remember all five words. I still refer to that text message sometimes while waiting in line because I forget. I haven’t told Male that because he’d laugh at me.

Exhibit H

Passwords. Forget about it. I can’t remember a single one. I have to keep them in a password protected file on my hard drive. Sometimes, I will open the file and forget to close it. What is the point of having a password protected file if I just leave it open on my desktop? No point. There is no point to that. Derp.

I think I’ll stop here today, lest I completely embarrass myself. I would go on, but to be honest, I can’t remember anything else right now. Brain, I do wonder about you sometimes.