Lazy Brain is a theory/concept I came up with years ago after witnessing my father-in-law interact with his family.

He would misspeak out of sheer laziness, mispronouncing a well-known name or movie title and someone in the family would jump to his aid by correcting him or finishing his sentence.

Later, alone with my wife, I would tell her that the family was enabling his Lazy Brain and perpetuating the behavior. And that they were doing him a huge disservice, keeping him from exercising his brain.

Flash-forward to the last few years when Lazy Brain has taken on a reverse-meaning for the practice of not letting outside resources help when the inevitable brainfart occurs.

It usually happens with a song, a movie, an actors name or the name of an acquaintance. And the Internet age has made it even easier to look it up. The act of thinking hard, sometimes stopping what we’re doing, until we get it has become a weird ritual in our new family. One that I hope will - like using your non-dominant hand for brushing your teeth - stave off Alzheimers for at least a little while.

I’ve been trying to remember the name of a band after hearing an old song in a Budweiser spot for three weeks now. I could just go look at my CD collection, but I’m determined to dig it out of my Lazy Brain.

We all keep this information deep within our brains. We don’t forget it. We just lose the will (or think we lose the ability) to go find it. I believe that the more we stop and dig deep for it, the easier it will be to get the next one. And even if we never reach photographic memory, we might just get a little smarter by forcing our Lazy Brains to be a little less so.