Character Sketch - Joe, the Brain

     My roommate’s name is Joe. I call him “The Brain” sometimes, and have spoken about him to more than one person, saying that our unit boasts the largest brain in the Brigade. (For a fictional character sketch, click here)

     His cranium measures 25” in circumference, and is shaved and quite shiny at times. Aircraft mistake it for a landing zone, eagles have seriously deliberated using it as an eyrie, when it’s submerged in water it affects the flow of the earth’s currents, and the moon itself has gazed upon the mass of this cranium with wonder. Its weight alone should qualify for special privileges on the sit-up portion of the Army physical fitness test.

     Joe is a gentle giant – soft-spoken, kind, with a devout faith in his religion, at 6’2” and 270lbs. The moniker is fitting in other ways as well. He has a very precise way of speaking and is a software developer for a large company when he’s not in Iraq. We’re talking formidable brain power.

     For example, the other night I was commenting on how “there’s all this crap in the air from the burn pit, and it’s making me cough.”

     Joe thought about this, and said quite simply, “There must be some type of particulate in the air that is annoying the membrane in your lungs.”

     Yes, I said laughing, I’m sure you’re right. A particulate.

    Another time, in Mississippi, Joe walked by me as I happened to be staring up at the moon one night. He stopped for a minute, and said “The phase the moon’s in is called waxing gibbous,” before moving on. It was funny, because he said it in a quiet nostalgic voice that mirrored the way I felt, but his words were succinct and fact-oriented.

     I think I knew somewhere in my own brain the phases of the moon, but they were buried pretty deep at that moment of quiet solitude, looking up there, feeling a bit lonely and discontented. The time to leave the United States was drawing close, and I think we were all in a bit of an emotional slump. Joe’s comment snapped me out of it that night. Facts have a way sometimes of clearing the mind.

    Another parallel to his unofficial nickname is my theory that his brain is so large he has to keep it occupied at all times or it will run rampant. This would explain why he has more electronic devices than most. Joe has a laptop, an MP3 player, a game boy, a PDA with mini-keyboard, a Play Station portable, a wireless router, hubs, spare batteries, accessories and power supplies for them all. And he can be seen walking to and from the shower trailer almost nightly with his favorite headlamp strapped around his cranium. On the almost day long journey to Kuwait, I can assure you Joe never ran out of electronics (or batteries) to keep him occupied. He watches a lot of movies, plays a lot of games, and spends a lot of time on a computer or listening to his mp3 player.

     The other night I entered the room and Joe had his large frame hunched over his laptop.

     “What’s up?” I asked.

     “Oh, just working on something here.” Joe said.

     “Wanna share, dude?” I said.

     “Yeah. Come check this out,” he said, a small hint of intellectual excitement growing in his voice, like a scientist talking about the discovery of a new solar system, “I’m trying to develop a way to calculate the exact distance between two points on the planet earth.”

     “Really?”

     This would be a handy tool to have in Joe’s military occupation. As I watched and listened, he expounded on the ways he had tweaked an excel spreadsheet to define the circumference of the earth, pointing out that it’s difficult because the earth is not a true sphere, but rather a spheroid. He went on to explain that by using the earth’s meridian and equator as starting points, with formulae involving pie, and the Pythagorean Theorem, he was able to determine precisely how many feet, meters, and miles the circumference of the earth is.

   Of course, he mentioned, he’s going to have to teach himself calculus in order to put the finishing touches on the project. And the fact of the matter is that when he figures out the surface of the earth, he has to take the mass of his own cranium into account, or it’s bound to be a little off.

   I admire people like Joe, who have a gift for mathematics and science. And I’ve always been envious of people who could draw and paint. I have friends who can take a piece of charcoal or pastel and create a lucid scene on the canvas. I once had a roommate who created paintings that were haunting and incredible, only to paint them black and start over because she didn’t like some small detail of color she had chosen. Amazing. I can hardly draw a straight line without the help of a ruler.  

     Joe and I make good roommates. I’m a walking paradox – An officer who specializes in communications, but day dreams about putting his experiences down on paper and whose mind seems forever stuck in the College of Liberal Arts.

     Joe is a walking, talking, scientific calculator who sees the same moon I do, but ponders it, perhaps, in a different way. We get along well, and respect each other’s space.

     Like all the other guys I work with out here, he's a good man. He talks about his family often, reads the bible nightly, and is always willing to help out a buddy. I’m proud to serve with the dude, and I hope we remain friends long after this experience has entered the realm of memories that I embellish upon more and more as the years pass.

    He is not the only one among us that likes electronics. Most of us have embraced this technological age, and we love our digital music and DVDs and video games and instant messaging and internet. Joe simply stands out from the rest a bit because he is really good with computers and he’s, shall we say, scientifically inclined, and is definitely what you’d call a computer geek.

  And of course, he has the most massive cranium in the Brigade, as far as I can tell.

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