Of the Sere-bum

I sat with the brat the other day to help him with his homework. The home work file was scarily heavy. Given that to complete one page with fill in the blanks has mamma at the point of tearing her remaining five strands off her scalp, not to mention a very sore voice box, which will subsequently need much honey ginger and warm water to get back to audible decibel levels at the earliest.

Mamma opened the Social Services book to be confronted by diagrams of various internal organs of the human body. The heart. The brain. The lungs. The intestines. Biology had never been a strength in mamma's school going days. The most telling memory of her biology class is mamma clean passing out when handed a scalpel and a frog, and needing to be heave hoisted to sick bay. Anyway. The brat was learning the internal organs and Mamma therefore, to be absolutely sure of what she would be imparting to the child, got the richly illustrated encyclopedia which would have bought her a half way decent luxury handbag at half price sale, and opened it up to the page where these rich illustrations of the internal organs could be viewed. The brat stared at them sceptically. The illustrations were in vivid crayola shades of pink and red, and even a plum. These were placed bang next to photographs of said internal organs which werent as colourful as the illustrations.

Mamma started, "Brat, this is the brain of a person."  Which purson? Is a dead peepul or a lively peepul? Mamma presumed it was taken when said owner of brain was dead, one doesnot expect a brain to be photographed in such exclusion of the cranium and to be still functional. "I think the person who owned it must be dead."
How dey took it out of the head bones? Mamma could see the conversation drifting towards slasher movie territory and quickly circumvented the discussion into how the doctors operated on said brain and removed it post the owner's demise.
Bud wai dey did dat! That dead peepul will get angry. Den dey'll become a bhoot and come to ask for their brain back.
The brat has obviously been watching random horror serials at unsupervised moments. Mamma asked him for the source of this information and he swore it came from an intense discussion in the park with other critters his age, one of whom had been told gruesome tales of bhoots and such like by his maid. Mamma pooh pooh the concept with adequate disdain hoping to convince the brat that bhoots dont exist and went back to the brain laid splat on the page. Mamma looked up the indicators and pointed confidently. This is the cerebrum and this is the cerebellum. This is the medulla oblongata. Mamma rattled off some spiel about the functions of each of these, the right and the left hemisphere and how they control the opposite parts of the body, the brain stem and the descent into the spinal cord, when she suddenly froze. She remembers doing parts of the brain much later, probably in the seventh or the eighth standard. When Biology was officially a subject. What is the hurry with teaching the kids words they cant even pronounce right now, she wondered?

She slowed down her pace. "Brat, do you know what the cerebrum does?" Te serebum doesnt do anyting? It just stays there in the head bone. Giving orders to eveyone. Like Pappa.

At least he got the concept right.