A Small Example of How My Brain Works

If "works" is the right word...

Backstory: Because my TV isn't new enough to be able to connect directly to the ESPN+ app, which I use to get hockey games, I have a small Roku device to do it. 

I do nothing else on the Roku, but they still pointlessly send me marketing emails from time to time. (Don't get me started on how ESPN+, who of all people should know I only watch hockey, sending me emails about things like boxing events.)

So I got an email recently with this subject line:

Now, maybe you react differently, but when I got to the word "Howdy" there, I laughed involuntarily, the same way I do every time I see one of these stupid "trucks":

I don't choose to laugh at them: it just happens.

Meanwhile, back to "howdy": my brain immediately popped word-associations into my head. 

Hey look at me I'm a lamp I'm a cowboy howdy howdy howdy

Which seems like gibberish, right? 

Well, there was a teaser of a connection to Sandra Boynton in there, so I pulled out my copy of her classic book, Don't Let the Turkeys Get You Down:

And found this:

So there's the lamp, but not the howdy.

I searched online but couldn't find it. Let it sit for a day or two, and my subconscious finally popped up that, hmmm, wasn't the cowboy part from a Far Side cartoon?

Ah ha! Score one for the weird way my brain cross-indexes information. Sandra Boynton and Gary Larson don't have a lot in common, but "hey look everybody" brought both of them to my mind.

For what that's worth.

(Once I figured out those things, it appears to have cleared the way to remember the Spic and Span commercial with Minnie Pearl ["Howdy! Anuthuh new flo-ah?"]...my brain is such a pack rat.)