My brain is keeping me up nights trying to retrieve lost data

As humans continue to evolve, one day we will have a switch in the back of our heads to turn off our brain. This will come in handy when you’re trying to get some sleep and there’s something your brain just won’t let go of. Hopefully, we'll be able to flip the switch back on again in the morning.
This idea came to me in the middle of the night when I couldn’t sleep because my brain was busy trying to remember the name of a cartoon show that's been off the air for a half-dozen years.
It started that day when somebody used the phrase “arms akimbo” in a conversation that I was not part of. The person uttered the phrase in a completely cartoon-free context. But my brain, which was eavesdropping, immediately told me to barge into the conversation and relay this bit of information:
There once was a cartoon show called “Earthworm Jim.” My son used to watch it, and one of the recurring villains was named Arms Akimbo. His arms were permanently akimbo, meaning his hands were stuck on his hips with his elbows jutting out to the side. He’d barge into rooms and knock people over by swinging his arms back and forth.
I butted into the conversation to impart this factoid to my friends. They seemed to think it was somewhat interesting, but totally irrelevant to the discussion they were having. Feeling satisfied that I’d reaffirmed my standing as meaningless trivia champion (especially when it comes to mid-`90s cartoon shows), I went back to what I was doing.
Later that night, I was sitting on my couch, watching a baseball game from the West Coast. The rest of the family had gone to bed. Five minutes after Stacy disappeared into the bedroom, I was asleep on the couch.
I awakened at 2 a.m. a little confused and groggy. I let the dogs out and stumbled off to bed. At some point during the two-thirds comatose walk to the bed, it occurred to me that Arms Akimbo was not a villain on “Earthworm Jim.” He was a villain on another show of the same era, the name of which I couldn’t remember.
I remembered the show was on right after “Earthworm Jim” on the Cartoon Network and the hero, whose name was the same as the show, wore a red suit with a yellow lightning bolt on the front and he had a big black pompadour. I remembered that the police captain on the show was voiced by Ed Asner.
I remembered that we had videotapes in the basement with episodes of “Earthworm Jim,” “Pinky and the Brain” and this other show. I remembered that these shows were very funny, written more for me than my 3-year-old son, Max, who had watched them with me. I remembered pretty much everything about that show, except what it was called.
I have a theory about this. It’s my belief that everyone's brain has a finite amount of information that can be stored in it. Not everyone’s brain can hold the same amount of information, but everyone’s brain will eventually fill up.
This happens to most people in their 30s. Once your brain is full, you can't remember anything new without forgetting something old. Here’s the tricky part: You don't get to choose what your brain is going to dump to make space for new information.
You’d like it to be National League baseball statistics from 1970 to 1980 and the words to Neil Diamond songs, but sometimes it’s your mother's birthday and where you left your car keys.
At some point, my brain needed some space and threw out the name of this cartoon show from 1996. I lay in bed that night trying to recall the name of the cartoon with the guy in the red jumpsuit.
“This is silly,” I thought to myself. “It's 2:30 in the morning. Go to sleep. You can figure it out in the morning. Just ask Max; his brain's not full yet. He'll remember.”
But the more I thought about not thinking about it, the more I thought about it. It was during the next half-hour that I remembered about Ed Asner and about how Earthworm Jim had a sidekick named Snot and his love interest was Princess What's-Her-Name.
It was also during that half-hour that I came up with the switch to turn off your brain theory. (The full-brain theory is one I've had for some time.) But I couldn't recall the name of the show.
I thought about going to the basement and digging through the box of old videotapes. Then I decided that the Internet might be easier. I stumbled out of bed and upstairs to the office.
I sat down, but before I could Google, it occurred to me I didn't know what to type. “What's the name of the cartoon show where the guy wore a red jumpsuit and one of the villains was named Arms Akimbo and Ed Asner did the voice of the police captain?” seemed like it might not work.
My first attempt was – “Arms Akimbo,” villain. This got me a bunch of literary references (possibly whatever the co-workers were talking about), but nothing I recognized as the show. I then tried – “Arms Akimbo,” Cartoon Network.
Eureka. The fourth site was dedicated to “Freekazoid.” How could I forget “Freekazoid?” It turns out that the lightning bolt on the front of the red jumpsuit was an “F!” It also turns out "Freekazoid" started on the WB before finding its way to Cartoon Network. But other than that, I remembered it correctly -- except the name, of course.
After reading a couple of sites and discovering that the Dodgers had won the game 7-3, I made it to bed about 3:30. Later that morning, when I had to get up to make sure the kids were getting on the school bus, I was glad I didn't have my brain turned off the night before. It would have taken more than a switch to get it running again. It might have required a car battery and a set of jumper cables.
And now that I've got “Freekazoid” back in my brain I'm sure something else has been pushed out of there. I'm sure it wasn't that important.
Has anyone seen my car keys?