Brain remembrances

Have you ever had that thing when your brain is sort of at an idle, and then out of nowhere pulls something completely random out from behind it’s back?

BRAIN: I notice that you are not doing too much at the moment, so here why don’t you randomly remember two-thirds of the dance moves from the Macarena?

Thanks Brain, no really thanks. Now I have that awful song in my head.*

Recently, whilst at work, I remembered a phrase that had made me laugh like a drain a few days earlier. At the time that was fine.

Being reminded of it at work was problematic, to say the least.

The phrase is below, and afterwards, I will explain the story behind it, but to enjoy this story you should see it for the first time as I remembered it.

It is break time at work, around ten-ish (as Sean Connery calls that ball game) and we are all enjoying a warm cuppa, the work talk that I am not joining in is as usual about football or something that has annoyed one of my colleagues today.

As that hate-filled miasma burbles along my brain goes:

ROGER THE BEARDED LADY!

This still makes me laugh now, and I was prepared this time. You can tell that as I wrote it down. The effect at the time was cataclysmic.

This as I was drinking tea, and I nearly choked on it, I refuse to spit it out I am not wasting good tea.

I am not a savage.

I made a noise that can best be approximated with this word “Kersplurg!” and found myself with my head resting on my desk (special heightened desk due to my height, look at me) shuddering like I was just found naked in a freezing cold lorry park.

No, I am not a Terminator.

This stopped the conversations in their tracks, and my colleagues all just looked at me. Now as word of explanation I share little in the way of interests with my colleagues, and I certainly share very little in the way of their sense of humour. They wanted to know why I was laughing.

I couldn’t just snigger and sputter out “ROGER THE BEARDED LADY” with no explanation, could I?

Yet I could not explain it either, it would have ended up as one of those work stories where someone explains some set up for their anecdote and by the end, everyone in the office is bored or dead.

If I explained it they would have understood less than if I just shouted the single line at them and collapsed into giggles.

You see, the reason that phrase was in my head was a few days earlier I had been playing the game ‘Outer Worlds’, with my wife backseat gaming.

Both of us were feeling a bit ill, as is customary at the start of a British autumn, so I was sort of idly starting the game to get the dynamics and then start it again in the future.

So, I was somewhat more lackadaisical with my character creation than I would usually be. For people who do not play video games, and really, there are still people like that. I work with some of them.

For those people, when you start a role-playing game you choose the aspects of the basic character that you are going to play the game as.

I chose a few basics without really paying attention, but put more thought into the hair and face.

So after a while scrolling through different hair and beard styles I settled on one that we both were amused by and moved on.

I then named the character, and inexplicably I went for ‘Roger’.

No idea. My improv brain just throws random stuff out all of the time, and that was what burbled to the surface at that point.

Then I started the game, I noticed fairly quickly in a fight that my character made more feminine noises than I would have expected Roger to make. I quickly realised that I had chosen my character to be female. I am not bothered by that in any way, so I continued to play. Blissfully unaware of what was going to happen soon.

The Outer Limits is a first-person role-playing game, which means you play from the view of your character. So like in real life, you can’t see your own face. Unless you have a reflective surface, a screen or wayward eyes.

Roger had none of these to hand, so there was no visual clue to me of what she looked like, or indeed a reminder of her name.

I do not know about you, but I don’t go around with a player name floating above my head that I can look at.

Although it would be mildly amusing to see some 14 year old with the name “HunterKillerShagger” above his head.

After a few basic missions my character levelled up, and in a game like this, you get a reward of some points to spend how you choose on your skills. Bear in mind to choose carefully, as the skills can greatly affect the way that you intend to play the game in the future. So I was intently staring at the skill tree and reading through the advantages and disadvantages for my playing style.

This screen also has an image of your character on the right and their name underneath.

My wife, who is much more ill than I am, is not paying attention to the skill tree and is merely looking at the character.

At which she slowly realises, through the analgesic fug, that my character is called:

“ROGER THE BEARDED LADY!”

We roll around with mindless guffawing for quite some considerable time. All in all a fairly silly but wonderful shared remembrance for the both of us.

Nice, that isn’t it?

Apart from I now laughing uncontrollably about it at work, with no explanation, and no similar frame of reference to even frame the story.

So now I am back in the room laughing at something that makes little sense to anyone but my wife and I, with people whose idea of computer games stopped with Pong.
This might seem irrelevant in these more coronavirus times, but shared remembrances are what life is about.

Keep safe people.