Monkey Brain

When I was a kid, my family was teased me about an alleged obsession with bathrooms. Whenever we’d go out to dinner, I’d inevitably spend some time in the ladies room, and apparently too much time, according to the fam.

No one asked me why I spent so much time in the bathroom, and I assure you that it wasn’t some obsessive-compulsiveritual of washing my hands 20 times before eating. I was the youngest of four, and a Monkey Brain to boot; sitting around a table with a bunch of older people was bo-ring. The main thing that got me through these dinners was the distraction of food, or going through my dad’s wallet. However, once I learned to read, and found some of my mom’s credit cards that were “accidently” in my Dad’s wallet, my snooping days were over and it was all about food.

So I checked out the bathrooms of every restaurant we visited. My favorite by far was the “ladies lounge” at our yacht club, which was a suite that included full doors on each stall and a separate room with big mirrors, and cute settees for ladies to re-apply their makeup or just take a break from being fascinating by sitting on one of the ornate settees. I also liked walking through the attached coat closet, feeling the softness of the furs in winter before I realized that fur is murder. By the time I returned to the table, my food would be waiting for me, and I’d be on the downhill slope of having to sit still and listening to the boring adult talk.

Yesterday, it took 10 minutes for my computer to start up, so I defragmented my very fragmented hard drive. After returning voicemail and reading through everything work related that I could, my Monkey Brain was about to explode at my computer, which said “24% complete” after an hour.

So, I took a page from my younger days and decided to head to the adult equivalent of my childhood ladies lounge trips: Walgreens. 30 minutes, 1 bottle of nail polish, the latest copy of Allure and several salty snacks later, I returned to a fully defragmented computer.

Works every time.