by Beth Goodman

Disclaimers: None whatsoever. Oh, maybe a spew alert.

Feedback is always welcome: bethgoodman@e-scribblers.com.

Copyright © 2004 by Beth Goodman. All Rights Reserved.

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I'm not stupid, you know.

But I can be very, very dense.

I've discovered that it's not the grand sweeping generalities of life that cause me problems, it's the details that get me every time. Hand me a grand, sweeping, hundred hour project and I am the picture of organization and vision. Ask me to empty the money from the copy machine while the secretary is away and you can sell tickets to the show.

I could tie my shoes before I figured out how to blow my nose or drink out of a straw (I kinda had those two backwards, but I just couldn't sort them out.)

I almost flunked math in fourth grade and again in seventh grade, but I got an A in college when I took Calculus as an elective (I was a medieval history major.)

I can build a computer from the ground up and manage an entire network, but I have a hell of a time getting the safety seals off medicine bottles -- we won't even mention the cotton inside them.

I can calculate instantly what time it is in Wales, but I have a hard time reading a traditional clock. Well, at least I have a good excuse for that one, my buddy Scott gave me a backwards clock. It ran in reverse, and after I learned to read it, my brain got kind of scrambled and now I really have to concentrate on the location of the "big hand" and the "little hand." My favorite thing about that clock though, was that it drove my co-workers nuts. I still have it -- and it's been stuck at 10:30 for about five years now.

Sometimes, I am struck by sudden epiphanies about the world and my misconceptions of it... God reaches down, smacks me on the back of the head, and says, "Idiot."

Case in point: for years I believed there were things called "xings" (pronounced zings) that were similar to zones -- there were deer xings and elk xings and school xings... and then one day as I was riding the bus home FROM COLLEGE this huge light bulb went off over my head. "Crossings!" I shouted, all of a sudden. No one paid much attention, you gotta be weirder than that on the public transportation system of a large city before anyone notices. I had been calling crossings "xings" for years, and I'm sure people thought I was just being a smart ass -- but no, I was genuinely as bright as a lump of coal.

When I was 6 or so, riding in Mom's car during a rain storm and all of a sudden I saw the water running UP the windshield. (Please remember that my car experiences were limited.) I just about came unglued. "Mom, the water is running up the windshield!!" No comment -- I figured she was just having to concentrate on driving in this phenomenal storm that was forcing the rain up the windshield. It was years later that I realized she had just been squirting the windshield washer fluid. Egad.

In my first apartment, I decided one day that dish soap was a perfectly acceptable replacement for dishwasher soap and wound up having to do laundry as well as the dishes after the dishwasher regurgitated mountains of bubbles and flooded the floor.

Then there was the time I managed to burn my finger attempting to cook while I was on the phone. This was back when phones were still tied to the wall with an umbilical cord. I couldn't reach the sink to run cold water over the burn, so I stuck my finger in the freezer -- after I had stuck it in my mouth -- have you noticed that the operative word here is "stuck"? My finger froze to the bottom of the freezer like a tongue to a flag pole in January. I thought I was gonna have to ask the person on the other end of the phone to call 911 to get me out because now I couldn't reach anything. Fortunately, there was a glass of dirty water nearby and I was able to pour it in the freezer and free my finger -- which now had a second degree burn and frostbite. Now that takes talent, especially when you realize that the whole problem could have been avoided if I just put the phone down. Once again I had fallen victim to one of life's pesky details.

Take me to Life With Granny 18...

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