How My Brain Works: Finding Words

It just struck me that my brain has a unique method of accessing words. I realized this while working on the answer to a question for my professional responsibility course. I had finished writing the first part of the answer… the next half second seemed to go by in slow motion:

1) The question was whether a legal employer could place restrictions upon an attorney’s right to practice even after he has left the firm, including a prohibition on working with any of the clients he had worked for at the firm. After answering in the negative (mostly), I realized I could add a second part to my answer;
2) Conceptually, I knew that I wanted to talk about how if a firm did impose those restrictions, it might not only infringe on the rights of the attorney but also of the clients, if they want to stay with the attorney in question;
3) I knew there was a word I wanted to use to describe this concept, and I knew I KNEW the word, but it wasn’t at the front of my brain;
4) As I started writing the answer, I noted to myself that the word I wanted to use would come at the very end of the sentence;
5) I put in a “request” for the word… that is, I sent my brain scurrying around for the proper word, stored in one of my memory engrams somewhere in the cavern of my head;
6) By the time my pen had gotten to the end of the sentence, the word was there. I ended the sentence with the phrase “client autonomy.”

The above six steps took place in less than half a second. I was not consciously aware of each step as it occurred. Only after writing the sentence did I realize that I didn’t know the word I was going to use to describe my thoughts until I actually used the word — and then I backtracked and realized How the Word Came to Be.

And it’s fascinating to me, because I’d guess that this is how my brain ALWAYS works. Ideas and concepts and thoughts are in the cavern, rattling around, and some part of my brain is constantly sending out acquisition requests, and when my support staff is actually paying attention, BOOM! I am the pinnacle of linguistic efficiency. 

[Note: The exact same thought process just occurred for all the big words in my last sentence ("pinnacle," "linguistic" and "efficiency"). I call them big words because they require more brainpower to retrieve than, well, most of the everyday words.]

Now, if only my brain could spit out a few good parrot names! Will I be settling on Rudy? Go wild with Ruby? Get all hippy with Chroma? Or will I go with something entirely different, like Menorah or Jack-o-Lantern (“Jack” for short) or, as some have suggested, Goldblatt?

Ooooohhh….. SCALIA! He will wittily dissent from every suggestion I give him. Hi Antonin! How ya doin’, ‘Tony? Yes you are… yes you are… who’s my Scalia!