Erratum: It is “Baba O’Riley” not “Bubba O’Reilly.”

So, last night something niggled in my brain. Something was not right. And then it came to me: I had mistaken the name of the Who song (or is it “the The Who song”? awkward but correct – I figure the Who song is “Da Foo Dorus” or whatever it is from How the Grinch Stole Christmas). And my brain – not, interestingly, my husband nor my son who had both read the blog and even commented on the song — caught it and would not let go until it had shepherded the correction to consciousness.

Of course, I feel silly now. Hadn’t “Bubba O’Reilly” looked a little odd when I typed it? Did I imagine that a Brit band had written a song about a man who, while likely of Irish ancestry, clearly lived in Texas or Alabama? Well, perhaps the stockinette was getting to me.

The point, though, is that the brain is amazing! It knows things – things I skip over. It happens in my knitting all the time. I will be knitting along on a lace pattern and suddenly: Click! Something is not right. And I scrutinize and see that, by gum, I have just knit over what I should have been k2tog-yo-ssking or whatever. Or perhaps the row below is messed up. And my brain picked up on it without my consciously seeing it.

My phrase for this kind of illumination is ”Miss Clavel turned on her light and said ‘Something is not right” – from the Madeleine books (which made quite an impression on me when I was a child – all those chic little French girls in two straight lines and the formidable 9-ft-tall sisters in blue robes and wimples).

So, if I run into one of these mystical insight experiences, I will say to Sarah “Miss Clavel turned on her light” and she knows what I mean. It is a little classier than saying “O, sh-t!”