PAY ATTENTION!!!!!!

After yesterday’s post, I found myself engaged in conversation with someone I wasn’t particularly interested in talking to. What did I do, I tried to pay attention. In doing so, it appears that I had a strange look on my face. It’s the look I get when I really-really try to pay attention. Ya see, I’m a wonder-er. When I listen to people or things for a long period of time, my mind starts to wonder. Which is why it’s completely amazing that I’ve kept this blog up so long. There have been times when I was telling a story and lost interest in my own story leaving listeners bewildered and handing by their nails on the cliff!

I don’t know why I do this. Maybe I’m easily distracted by shiney things. I remember when I was little, I used to get a whole bunch of toys for Christmas. Man, if I could get ahold of some of those pictures or home videos, I’d post them. I’m talking, every single toy I circled in the JC Pennny’s catalog (Don’t act like you didn’t do that too!) and then some. And you know what? Without fail, by the time school started back up, I’d lost interest in 98% of those toys.

At work, if a meeting lasts more than 50 minutes, I get up and take a break. Otherwise, everything said at minute 51 and beyond goes right over my head! I know I have this problem. I haven’t sought help. Maybe I had adult ADHD–which wouldn’t surprise me since it wasn’t until graduate school where I found out I have a sorta spacial accuity thing that, were it caught early, would have lowered folks’ expectations of me and I wouldn’t have been expected to learn to read. I could learn but I’d have difficulty. But since I wasn’t diagnosed, I learned to read with no problems. Was ahead of my class even. Did I ever tell y’all I was the valedictorian on my K class? Did I tell you there was an attempt to skip me from third to fifth grade and moms wasn’t having it. And I can’t spell. Go figure!!!

Speaking of reading, what do y’all think about Fantasia saying she can’t read good?? The wacu radio station was talking about it yesterday. Poking fun at her even. But to me, this issue is way bigger than her. I mean she is the one who came to us with B-A-B-Y-M-A-M-A so our expectations should be low. But, her not being able to read speaks to deficiencies in the public school system. Speaks to limited parental involvement. Speaks to the FACT that way too many American adults are funtionally illiterate!!! And that’s no laughing matter. People with and around kids, make them read and discuss what they read to you with you!

Anyhow, back to my short attention span. Can’t you tell from the ease of tangental ramblings that my mind hardly stays on one thing too long? Not only do I have issues paying attention in meetings and conversations but in relationships too. Let me ’splain. I have found myself in so many situations where someone considers me to be their bestest friend evuh. I’m talking B.F.F. and shyt. But in my mind, they are in the Random Person box. Sure we might share a meal, kick it here and again, and I might even return their phone calls. But when it gets right down to it, I don’t see them in the same light as they see me.

When we met, they were interesting. Talking to them was like reading a book for the first time. Of all the books I’ve read, I’ve never re-read a book. I might have watched the movie adaptation but never re-read the actual book. So once I learn as much as I want to know about the new person, they get shelved. This doesn’t apply to everyone. But it does apply to a lot of people I meet.

I used to think these people were just crazy clingy and their attachment to me and our ‘friendship’ was all a figment of over-active imaginations. But then, on one of those up-early-not-going-to-church-but-just-laying-there-thinking Sunday mornings, I realized that I usually decide immediately if someone’s going to be my friend. Or if they even have a chance. Yeah, I’m the queen of not-so-well-thought-out-snap-decisions-when-it-comes-to-people. But I wonder if all the people who got put in the Cool To Kick It With/Notsomuch For Real Friendship Box really belonged there. I might have passed up some really good friends/frociates that way.

And I think that this is what happens in male/female relationships when one party thinks everything is going along famously then all of a sudden the other person’s interest drops. Maybe the newly uninterested party is done reading the interested party’s book. And just like I would say in male/female relationships, boundaries should be set early on. Knowing that I have this issue, I’ve been working on setting boundaries early on. If a person is sincerely (can’t stress the sincere part enough) trying to be my friend and I know I don’t want the same thing, I been trying to stop-drop-and-roll out of their lives. Which may all contribute to my not being friendly.

Blogging is cheaper than therapy.