Monday, July 10, 2006
Short And To The Point
No, not me -- Jeff Harrell:
A few minutes ago I was sitting on my balcony reading a book. I wondered idly what time it was. I instinctively looked into the upper-right corner of the page.
I’ve been spending way too much time in front of computers lately.
Now, I ask you -- isn't that just beautiful?
I showed it to my wife; she laughed and reminded me of the time, a few days ago, when she was playing Scrabble with her eldest, and reached for our new candy-red Scrabble dictionary. A moment later she looked down at her hand, and saw that what she had in fact reached for was a brick-red oven mitt, which happened to be lying there. (This started a trend. I took a heavy pot off the stove the other night, and said "I think I'm gonna need two Scrabble dictionaries for this one".)
I did catch her the time she reached (without looking) for a Scotch-tape dispenser, sitting next to her computer, and moved it as though it was her computer mouse. Needless to say, it didn't work.
And that reminds me of the time I drove east from UMass Amherst, planning to spend the weekend with my folks. It had been a long week, and I was dog-tired. As I drove on Rt. 9 through Hadley, I saw a banner stretched high over the street, printed on transparent plastic. I didn't give it a thought -- Amherst and Hadley were always putting up banners, advertising a Teddy-Bear Rally or some such -- I just read the banner, returned my eyes to the road, and continued.
But then I thought about it a bit. Who would be crazy enough to print a banner on a transparent background? That just makes it harder to read, after all. So I took another glance at the banner, just before driving under it -- and saw that it wasn't a banner at all. It was a telephone wire, stretched across the street, with random groupings of birds sitting on it.
To this day, I wonder what on Earth I thought that banner said.
It's funny, isn't it, the way the mind works when you catch it not paying attention? (And I really should say something nice to Jeff, for the way he keeps writing my blog posts for me.)
