Strap on Your Thinking Cap, Folks

When I was a child, a few of my teachers would say things like "let's all put on our thinking caps".  The first young man who told us to do this actually went thru the motions of buckling on a helmet; movements which we students aped with enthusiasm, because most of us still loved school and adored our teachers.  Since I moved around some, there would be times when I would be ahead of the rest of my class in certain subjects and I'd get a smidgen bored.  I remember our math instructor for both fifth and sixth grade was fond of saying this and every time, I'd imagine what my thinking cap would look like, if it were a real thing.

First, I thought of the leather helmets the old time football players wore.  But then, that seemed like it would block ideas instead of encourage the thinking process.  Then I thought of the smooth plastic looking helmets that had white chin straps that I'd seen kids that had seizures wear...I quickly discarded that notion, because those helmets seemed to be a dangerous idea, especially since I had seizures myself and knew that the back edge on that could cut right into your neck and do some real damage.  Then I thought of more complex sorts of headgear, like that worn by scientists in my brother's comic books and on the back cover of the sci~fi novels he read.  But those seemed very top~heavy and I wasn't sure my neck could hold my eight pound head and a rig like that up.  So that was not going to be my thinking cap design.  During the 80s, the movies brought Back to the Future to us and Tron, where we saw contraptions like this.

Personally, I associated this style with ambulatory EEGs and thought it probably came the closest to being a thinking cap; but it didn't produce and encourage thought.  It recorded brain activity and not even very well, it seemed to me; the print out was wavy lines on graph paper versus a clear depiction of which area of the brain was stimulated at what time when you had what thoughts.  Still, it was a great deal better than most of the ones I had thought of so far, including the metal caps that would end thought...like those found on the electric chair.

Then life happened and about ten years ago, these thinking caps started to surface, knit usually.  That actually did appeal to me, and probably would have been one of my first choices for my thinking cap, had I seen it when I was ten, or twenty, or even thirty {I was a PhD student at that time, I so would have worn it for inspiration...instead, I wore my psuedo~intellectual hat of tan corduroy for the days when I felt decidedly stupid...let the others wear jackets with corduroy elbow patches to beef up their appearance of smarts, I had a thinking cap; no one knew it was a thinking cap, no one but me.}



Several days ago, Umberto Eco died.  He's not my favorite author; in fact, he doesn't even make my preferred authors' list.  However, Eco is an acquaintance's absolute favorite author, she adores him and his writing style and enthusiastically called the readers among us to devour and discuss ALL of his work.  My response was:

Debra Wolf no. i'll support your reading him, your right to consider him one of your favorite writers of all time, and am willing to hear why {or read why} you have afforded him that honor; but i personally find his writing to be too full of tangents and pretentious leaps to willingly read any {let alone all} of his stuff....shudder. Even my mother, who loved the movie "The Name of the Rose" found the book to be overly wrought with tedious, ostentatious bravado to be worth finishing. Several years later, I thought perhaps my tastes had matured enough to tackle "Foucault's Pendulum" ~~ I was grievously mistaken. Even writing this comment, about his writing, finds me taking on despicable airs in his fashion....ugh.

Please give me a reason to like him and his writing and I will certainly give it a shot.

 To which she immediately rose to the challenge and suggested several titles, essays, and admirable qualities of Eco's.

*sigh*

So, I've given the ole thinking cap a good dusting, spit shining it to a sparkly polish, and will be donning it tomorrow when I stop by the local public library to collect some of these writings.  I do imagine I'll have the facial expression this cat sports; but then again, attitude debra, if you mean to give this a fair shake, you must suspend the attitude.  Look for an update later this week regarding this mission.