I have a mind that once it latches onto a puzzle or mystery it doesn’t let go, ever, quitting only when an answer is presented. That doesn’t mean that every second of every day will be spent gnawing the problem, but that problem will resurface in my mind, like debris after a shipwreck, fouling my thought chains at random and often inopportune times.

 Here’s an excellent example.

 Sometime in perhaps 1990 I was over at a friend’s apartment, a movie on HBO playing in the background, just relaxing when a name mentioned in the movie, Devereaux, sparks a memory and I can hear a partial line from another movie in my head. The partial line being “My name is Eston Devereux..” I knew it was spoken b y an old man and they his voice was frail and weak, but for the life of me I could recall the rest of the line or the movie it came from. I tried to visualize the scene, but utterly failed unable to picture and actor, scene, or setting. Eventually I gave up, unable to produce the film or scene.

From time to time the line “My name is Eston Devereux…” would pop up in my mind like an unkillable slasher, derailing my train of thought, frustrating me, and every time I failed in forcing the right film to mind. This continued for over ten years, an itch that wasn’t constant but was chronic and maddening.

I resigned myself to never finding the answer and knowing that the line would repeat, throwing itself in my mind, taunting me for all time. Then one night in the early 2000’s I picked up a cheesy fantasy film on DVD, The Sword and The Sorcerer. The film has its many fault, but far better captures the feel of a D&D game than any film before or since (including the Dungeon and Dragons movies themselves.)

As I watched the movie and Talon, breaks into Evil King Cromwell’s dungeons I suddenly realize that I am about to hear the line, that my sheer chance I had stumble into the missing film and scene. An old man comes forward as Talon frees the prisoner and speaks the line, continuing on to say that he was the architect who built the castle and knows all of its secrets. Ahh, a psychic pressure, one that had hung in the background of my mind for a decade, lifted then and there.

My mind is like a steel trap, and yes that means it gets rusted shut at times.