The Voice In Your Head

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Do you have a voice in your head? Is it one that guides you or berates you? Does it have your best interests at heart? Does it surprise you?

I have, to be honest, more than one voice in my head. Some of them are not nice. More on that in a future post. My favourite voice, however, is one I’ve dubbed the Professor.

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As a family, we like to do the quiz from a local newspaper over dinner. It’s a good learning activity but really it’s just because in a house full of introverts, it’s an easy way to ensure some conversation occurs.

There’s usually 15 questions. Our best effort is 14 correct answers. We are, unfortunately, yet to crack the elusive perfect 15. On weekends, there’s an extra quiz with 25 questions. Ooh, bonus fun!

What does this have to do with voices in your head?

Because the Professor often gives me the answer.

I’m not kidding.

I’ve actually joked with my kids for months that I should always listen to the voice in my head because it always seems to know the answer even when I can’t personally be sure it’s correct.

Tonight it happened again.

The question was “Which New South Wales country town holds an annual Elvis Festival in January?”

My first response was to say, “Pfft. I have no idea.”

Then I heard it. In my head. The Professor. And she told me “Parkes.”

Did I know that? No.

But what did I have to lose by giving that answer since I had no other idea. (And neither did anyone else around the table.)

So I followed up my initial “Pfft. No idea” remark with “Parkes”.

The Youngest Son, responsible for conducting the quiz this evening, looked at me in surprise. I shrugged. He checked the answer. And then stared at me.

“Yes. That’s right.” he said.

Double fist pump in the air.

Then…. “Well, that was weird.”

It’s honestly a little creepy.

On a rational note, obviously at some point I must have read an article or seen some news on the television about the Elvis festival and my brain has filed that information away somewhere and when I was asked the question, the memory was triggered and I had my answer. Despite the fact that usually I can’t even remember the lyrics to a song I’ve sung a hundred times.

But I think I really prefer the idea of the Professor and her wisdom feeding me answers. It’s nice to have people on your side. Even if they’re just in your head.

 

 

29 thoughts on “The Voice In Your Head”

  2. As long as one of the voices is a loud, slightly brash, sometimes larger than life soul, who loves you with a deep, abiding, platonic affection, who is not afraid of the inner critic…..I’ll be happy…..

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  4. I too have voices, but I’ve never given them names – although admittedly just yesterday I finally recognized that one of those voices was my mother 😏

    I do like the helpful voice though. Now I shall start to imagine her as Maggie Smith 😆

    I like the idea of doing a nightly quiz at dinner. We did something similar one day when we were all together and discovered that ‘Alexis’ has games on it. With my competitive, Type A bunch, it became a rowdy free-for-all with a lot of shouting and laughter 🙂

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  6. The Professor helps me on occasion, during the weeknight viewings of Jeopardy. We won the bonus round a couple of weeks ago although we’ve yet to see any money for it. I think it was about Mark Twain, but now The Professor has left and I don’t remember.

    One day Mrs. McSmarty Pants, the next day Mrs. I’m Lucky I Found My Shoes.

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  9. Very cool! I think we probably absorb much more knowledge than we actually realise and that professor is there to call it up when we need it. I did know about the Elvis festival being at Parkes and we are planning to go one day. It will be a hoot.

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  10. That’s great Heather. I think I would like the voice in my head to be a bit more vocal. It seems like she needs to go through quite the logistics to dig through the filing system in my brain stem. Still if one is going to have voices bouncing around up there let’s be glad they are helpful ones. 🙂

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  11. We have a question/answer board game called ‘Trivial Pursuit’. We play it with a group of friends – men’s team against women’s team. The men invariably come up with the right answer quickly, but also invariably don’t know it is right, so they kick it around for a while and come up with other answers before finally settling on – the first answer. Painful for the women to watch.

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    • Gosh, I haven’t played Trivial Pursuit for years! We were mad keen on it in my family and had all the sets. Silver Screen was my favourite. I’ve never played it as a team game though. Your description of the men’s team sounds decidedly painful. 😀 I’ve definitely learned to always take the answer that arrives in my head first.

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