Wednesday, November 30, 2011

Embarassing Confessions of an Unofficial Amnesiac

A few weeks ago, I was in Hamilton and had the opportunity to go shopping with my Mom for a new pair of jeans, as my favourites had developed a hole in an "inconvenient spot".  Thankfully, I noticed this hole myself and didn't need to have my attention drawn to it as my husband's students so graciously did for him a few years ago with a note left on his desk:
I digress.  But this is the subject of my post in the first place, so I suppose I am allowed to digress.  I have, since my childhood, been a somewhat scatter-brained and forgetful individual.  I find that this condition has not become better with age - in fact, it has become worse with increased distractions.  I constantly forget things and leave things behind, and my multi-tasking during the day usually means that lots of things get half-done.  I'll start washing dishes, go to change a dirty diaper, then clean up toys in the living room, check the weather and clean the bathroom.  By the time I make it back to the kitchen an hour or two later and discover that I didn't in fact finish washing the dishes like I thought, the dish water is cold and I have to start all over again.  I will blame this on "Mommy-brain", although in all honesty, it is probably just a worsening of my original condition of forgetfulness that I have had since I was young.
This "Mommy-brain" not only has influence on my forgetfulness, but also my perception of the world.  The other day, Peter came home with a colouring sheet he had worked on at school.  He had written his name at the top, and I took a look at it and noted that although it was a little bit messy, and perhaps the second "e" was written backwards, it was definitely readable and I was impressed that he was writing his name on his own now.  It wasn't until Mike got home and pointed it out that I saw that he had written his whole name right to left.  Yeah, I didn't even recognize that my kid wrote his name backwards.  It looked perfectly fine to me...
Back to the story of the jeans.  So, I was shopping for new jeans, you know how that goes.  I picked out a number of jeans to try on - I probably had about 6 or 7 pairs, and I made my way over to the change room.  Once I had locked myself in, I turned to the pile to decide which one to try on first.  To my surprise, my pile was not what I thought it was.  Instead of 6 or 7 pairs of different jeans, I had a pile of 6 or 7 pairs of identical jeans.  All the same size, length, colour.  Hmmm.  That was not how I shopped.  Mom and I did a store-wide search for my original pile, which was discovered on a table where I had inadvertantly switched it with the stack of jeans for sale there.  Whoops.  So I tried on the jeans, and after a while I found a pair that I liked and we went to pay for them.  We were almost out the door when Mom asked me where my coat was.  Hmmm.  That's a good question, Mom!  I have no idea.  Backtrack through the change-rooms that I had used, and I found it in the first one.  I don't know how I manage to go grocery-shopping with all three of my kids and consistantly come back home with all three, as it is apparent that in my absent-minded condition, I can't go shopping without leaving things behind me in an amnesiatic blur. 
Well, I think that's about enough embarassing revelations about myself for today.  What embarassing things have YOU done recently?        

3 comments:

Leigh said...

LOVE this post! It's like you're living the same life as me! Jacob used to write his name backwards too! I did manage to leave one of the kids outside the school when i took the other ones inside for a potty emergency...I didn't even realize it until I went back outside and did the head count...oops =) thankfully there were other mom's around who kept an eye on my kiddo!

Unknown said...

Whoops! I am a little paranoid about doing something like that... it's one thing to leave a coat behind, another thing to leave a kid. I'm glad the other Moms were looking out for you and yours! :)

Unknown said...

I am sure I will do something like that too one day!