Talking with a Not Yet Fully Developed Brain

Our daughter on her twenty sixth birthday announced to the world, that now, by definition, she now has a fully developed brain.

I remember a conversation I had with a coworker when my brain was underage.

We were working in the warehouse. Mikey, myself and another guy we referred to as “The Viking”. The Viking had a wicked sense of humor understood by very few. The Viking was an amazing person whose legend grows in my mind, many years later. I love humor that takes a while to sink in.

Mikey was a loveable arrogant idiot who it took a while to figure out. He lived in a home for children who misbehaved and of course we as teenagers never thought to ask why he lived in “The Home’. Every person who came to work in that warehouse had a nickname. And on this day, everybody in the warehouse decided to call him Klinger.

And Mikey hated the nickname Kilinger. An equation found in ancient Viking scrolls found an inverse relationship between the hatred of a nick name and the quality of that nickname.

So, the Viking did a a fairly predictable thing, He took some clear tape from the loading dock and plastered to the ceiling of the lunchroom with inappropriate creative signs. In big black letters on the ceiling the word KLINGER floated across the ceiling.

I only watched the commotion from afar and didn’t take sides. Deep inside I rooted for Viking

Later that evening I was working on an odd job in the warehouse. Mikey walked over to me and pointed to the “Klinger” sign on the ceiling of the warehouse.

I simply looked at him and came up with an insane response at the time.

“Mikey blessed are the stupid.” which was a misplaced reference to Steinbecks “of Mice and Men.”

He looked me in the eyes and retorted, “I am not blessed.”