Sometimes I like to imagine that a team of tiny Hollies runs my brain. They wear uniforms (red jumpsuits to be exact), but they all have different hairstyles. Some of them are males with wild facial hair, but they all essentially look like me.
In the realm of my imaginary brain, there are billions of giant computers, huge filing cabinets and plenty of cushy chairs with wheels for the tiny Hollies to sit in while they’re hard at work making my brain function.
I do not imagine that the tiny Hollies work all day and all night making my brain function. There must be a day crew that handles most of the stuff that goes on in my brain while I’m awake, and a night crew that comes in and kind of cleans up my brain while I’m sleeping and makes dreams happen.
I don’t know where the Hollies go when they’re not at work in my mind. Maybe they go to a different part of my brain to sleep. Maybe they have little waterbeds in my stomach but maybe not. Stomach waterbeds might be dangerous, what with the stomach acid and all. Maybe the Hollies’ jumpsuits are stomach acid-proof. I don’t know. I’ve never thought about them this much.
I only began thinking about them now because my editor informed me that the theme for this week’s issue of the Maroon is Mardi Gras, and I immediately imagined the tiny Hollies in my brain working even harder than usual, searching around for something in my memory bank that I could possibly write about.
They are scrambling. They have looked through all of my obvious memories, and all they’ve found are a few mental snapshots of the dress I crafted out of Mardi Gras beads freshman year, a partially deleted memory of the scumbag I was dating last year around this time, and a possibly false memory of a Mardi Gras parade in St. Louis, which must have taken place when I was too young to properly remember things, if it is a real memory at all.
The Hollies have abandoned looking through my memories. They are now searching through the file cabinets of my brain for any trace of Mardi Gras-related trivia. They are not finding much.
My roommate once told me that Mardi Gras started in Mobile, Alabama, not in New Orleans. She was proud of this because she is from Mobile.
Rich people used to give their servants a feast once a year, which was called the Bean Feast. The most exciting part of the bean feast was the cake, and whichever servant got the piece of cake with the bean in it became the Bean King. This is where we get the Mardi Gras king cake tradition. I don’t know who told me that. The tiny Hollies’ creative team may have made it up so that I had something to write about.
The Hollies are in a state of wide-spread panic because this is all that I can come up with for this week’s column. I feel a sudden urge to participate in Mardi Gras this year.
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