POLITICALLY INCORRECT, I'M SURE

I was reading my e-mail edition of the NYT this morning and this article about brain injuries helping people stop smoking caught my attention (no, I am not making this up).

Scientists studying stroke patients are reporting today that an injury to a specific part of the brain, near the ear, can instantly and permanently break a smoking habit. People with the injury who stopped smoking found that their bodies, as one man put it, “forgot the urge to smoke.”

While no one is suggesting brain injury as a solution for addiction, the finding suggests that therapies might focus on the insula, a prune-size region under the frontal lobes that is thought to register gut feelings and is apparently a critical part of the network that sustains addictive behavior.

I don't have what you would call a "normal sense of humor;" in fact, it has been described variously as black, twisted, odd, demented and "just bizarre." So it shouldn't surprise you to learn that when I read that article my mind immediately went back to high schoool and my friend Jim. Overall, we had different tastes in music . . . he was into much harder stuff than I was, but we found some common ground. Mainly with Styx, and he introduced me to Led Zeppelin. But those musical differences also meant that we listened to different radio stations. His station of choice at that time was KISW-FM.

As with all morning shows, they would run a couple of skits. One of their most popular was Leave it to Beaver 1980. They actually had a Leave it to Beaver Marathon one weekend and it was a riot. The IM shorthand of ROFLMAO surely applied.

So, why did I immediately think of Leave it to Beaver 1980 when I read the article? Because of this particular episode.

Fair warning, Politically Correct it isn't.