Squirrel

At the close of yet another conference call where some word, phrase or situation triggered a pop culture reference to a song or a tangentially related movie clip, a longtime friend of mine said to me, “I can’t imagine what it is like inside your head.”   I accepted that as huge compliment, whether intended as such or not.

Looking back at it now I perhaps would have been diagnosed as a child with some level of ADD.  Focused, straight line, un-interrupted thought has never been my strength.  Likely never will be and that’s ok.   I think it is mentally impossible for me not to cross reference the here and now with disparate clips of movies or songs running on constant replay in my head. 

To me snippets of happiness includes finding kindred spirits who get my references on the fly.   Perhaps it is a passing recollection to ‘The Money Pit’ (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9CJ9EDtZ2p8 )when discussing a coworker’s new home fiasco, or evoking the name Claude Rains when an elevator door opens and shuts without someone getting on or off.  (an homage to a Hawkeye quote on MASH)  That mention got a chuckle out of a 70+ year old riding the elevator with me.  The rest of the riders simply looked confused.

Years ago an old college friend of mine reached out to me after seeing the following commercial. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iSlO6WhsczY . He was all excited and said, I was just telling my friends, ‘Brian, Brian would have made that commercial.  It’s weird, just the way he thinks.”  While I can’t take any credit for that particular confluence of an ‘80’s classic pop song, an ER and wide leg jeans into 60 seconds of wonderfulness, I was so very pleased with the recognition.  

At the close of exceptionally tough work weeks involving difficult challenges and frustrations, sharing the pain with a coworker typically would include Reno.  “Couldn’t roll me a seven, if you gave me loaded dice.”  (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rluMw9Ec3uM ).  At a particularly difficult career time a few companies ago, I evoked the ‘he who should not be named’ Harry Potter reference to illustrate my  displeasure with a person.  Fortunately his apparition occurred out of his role over me.   I kept that reference to a small band of brothers for a long time.  Eventually, I got over that with the help of a patronus.

I have become a firm believer that Youtube was invented specifically to facilitate my affliction.  If there were ever an ADD technological enabler it is the endless search engine of Youtube and my minds reference to long retired TV shows, Movie highlights or classic songs.  The only down side has been the copy write lock down eliminating most of the Northern Exposure clips from the site.  “This is absolutely key, it’s not the thing you fling but the fling itself.”    (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ppShcRlJeZI )

The never stopping pop culture collisions in my noggin keep coming.  It’s my way of reaching out, sharing and entertaining myself, if not others.  Well, at least one of the ways.   If these repeated nuggets of memories don’t win someone over, then I’ll just Andy Dufrane them ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OUGtR5Gl-4Y ) with two pop culture references a week.

Yes, those are my thoughts.  Whether it’s crowded in there or not can be debated, but I think (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SSUXXzN26zg )