I give up. I admit it. I flunk multi-tasking.
Here’s when I figured it out, finally:
I was in a hotel room watching MSNBC, as political pundits massaged an endless loop of the same election news. And at the bottom of the screen there were white banners with short phrases, evidently intended to explain the obvious, like OBAMA SPEAKING TO CROWD and MCCAIN LEAVING PLANE. Under the white banners was “the crawl,” a moving line of script that reported the events of the day, from whoever hit the last homerun in Cincinnati to the stock market in Tokyo to new evidence that pomegranates aren’t all they’re cracked up to be. I tried to focus on the pundits but the crawl kept distracting me, and then five minutes later I was distracted even from the crawl by a bright red banner that came on and said BREAKING NEWS.
But BREAKING NEWS doesn’t fool me anymore.
I used to stop dead when BREAKING NEWS came on the screen, dropping my dishcloth in alarm. Now, I know better. Everybody who watches TV eventually figures out that BREAKING NEWS is neither breaking nor news. BREAKING NEWS is easily the most oversold phrase in the universe, after SUPPLY LIMITED and my personal favorite, LOSE FIVE POUNDS WITHOUT DIET OR EXERCISE!
To get back to my point, what happened was that I was trying to watch the pundits but I had to ignore the BREAKING NEWS banner, and the crawl was telling me something about a tornado in the Midwest, and I starting thinking about nice Midwestern people losing their homes and how they really deserved the BREAKING NEWS banner and not the crawl, which seemed like a demotion, and then I wondered if their insurance had been paid, which lead me to wondering if my insurance had been paid, and then what if there was a tornado that leveled my house and by the way, do I really want yellow shutters? I mean, who has yellow shutters?
BREAKING NEWS: CHOCOLATE CAKE IS DELICIOUS.
That was my chain of thought, and before you can say Benjamin Moore, one of the pundits had disenfranchised the voters of Florida, one of whom was my mother. Between us, I knew she wouldn’t be happy about that. If my mother leaves the kitchen, she wants it to count.
BREAKING NEWS: IT’S GOOD TO HAVE FEET.
But the point is that I had lost track of what was going on because I was trying to ignore the BREAKING NEWS banners and trying to read the crawl, and then I tried to take in all three at the same time, which was impossible. Even if I managed to ignore the fake BREAKING NEWS, I got only the gist of the tornados and the gist of the primaries, and they both seemed like natural disasters.
I can’t do two things at once, much less three.
I had the same problem last week, when I did my grocery shopping while I was on the cell phone. It seemed to be an efficient use of time, and I was continuing a conversation I had been having while I drove, which by the way, was hands-free. The only problem was that I went into the store for eggs, light cream, and romaine lettuce, and came out of the store, albeit hands-free, with the wrong kind of cream, a hunk of cheddar cheese, and spinach in a plastic box.
So I have to face the fact that I can’t multi-task anymore. I used to be able to, but somewhere along the line, I lost my multitasking mojo. In a world of BlackBerries, cell phones, Sidekicks, and iPods, I don’t know what to do about it.
I have to do more than one thing at once, or I won’t get everything done. And I can’t do away with my electronic toys, because I need them too much. For example, when Francesca was away at school, I loved sending her photos of the dogs from my BlackBerry, like the time Penny discovered the sunroof.
And daughter Francesca sends me cell phone photos when she’s trying to decide which dress to buy, so I can see her wearing both. I don’t think that’s what shop-by-phone meant originally, but women are good at finding innovative ways to buy things.
We all know that our kids are texting, IMing, and calling each other all the time, bringing them closer to each other and making them happier, which is a good thing. And the devices can be lifesavers-calling for directions in a pinch or texting to find your kid, brother, and mother in a graduation crowd of 35,000.
So what’s the answer?
BREAKING NEWS: THERE ARE NO ANSWERS.