From time to time you will hear people quote that we do not use all of our brain power. I've heard of brain usage figires ranging from as little as 3% to as much a whopping half. Every time quoted with an air of indisputable authority.

However much the actual percentage is, the consensus of opinion points to the fact that there is a considerable portion of our brains that is sitting around idling or in neutral so to speak.

Well I've just discovered what that unused portion is SUPPOSED to be used for.

It's the HUMOR (HUMOUR if you're really fond of "U"s) lobe, that doesn't get used. It works fine in little kids, but as they grow it gets beaten into submission by parents and school teachers. "Don't be silly", "Grow up", "Stop acting the fool". How many times did you hear those sayings at school?

This all come to me in a flash of brilliance while reading my grocery receipt yesterday. There was an item listed as BOGO. Now I know I didn't buy a Bogo so I tried to figure out just what it was, strangely it had a negative cost which gave me a clue. It was an acronym, well a partial acronym for -Buy One Get One Free-. I guess they omitted the final F in case people would pronounce it 'Bog Off' (Just no sense of humor some people). Now the thing that struck me was, that this is one acronym that I won't forget despite suffering from acute CRS most of the time.

I won't forget it because it struck me as funny. Next time I go shopping I'll be looking for BOGO's everywhere. So it went straight into the normally little used humor lobe, where it doesn't have to compete with bills and bank accounts and other such unfunny things.

Look at the evidence around you. People are craving for jokes and laughs. Go to any of the dozens of Mudcat joke threads and see how quickly the reach the 100 mark and get spawned off to part II and II and more.

Read those thread and see how many times you lauch at the same jokes "What's perfect pitch?" - "When you throw a hammered Dulcimer away and it hits Spaw alongside the head on it's way to the garbage bin"

No moral to this story - just laugh a little more. And don't tell your kids not to be silly - laugh with them and don't force them to grow up too soon.