Attention Distraction Dis-whateveria

I was listening to a speaker (I think on PBS Ted Radio Hour) who was talking about a little girl, decades ago, who could not sit still in her chair at school. A specialist, after watching the child, from a distance, bounding and leaping and bouncing around his office, said to her mother, “She needs to move. Put her in dance class.” And the girl became a famous dancer and teacher of dance.

“It was before ADHD was invented,” the presenter said. “Before people knew they could have such a thing.”

Now, before some of you start hyperventilating, I do believe that some groups of kids learn differently than other groups of kids. Some children are intuitive about words and reading but abysmal at numbers and math. Others succeed at math and tank when it comes to reading. Some children sparkle and shine when it’s science time, and others are remarkable at art and/or music. Some boys and girls sit quietly and read and work and learn. Others need to move their bodies, tap their pencils, hum to themselves, and/or need to lie on the floor instead of sit in a chair, to learn. Kids take in information, absorb information, and give back information, in m-a-a-a-n-y ways.

The way a congregation, or a population, or the world does.

I would love to tell you I have a solution, but I don’t. I do have a suspicion that, if I had been tested at pretty much any time in school, I might have come out with an ADHD diagnosis. (Used to be, there was “Attention Deficit Disorder” and “Attention Deficit w/Hyperactivity Disorder.” They appear to be combined now. According to the ADHD site link above, there is the “Hyperactive-Impulsive Type” and the “Inattentive Type”–ME!) But it seems, at least for me, not so much an attention deficit, as it is an attention distraction. Give me a good novel, and I can tune out all sorts of things. Set me down to balance the checkbook, and I’m as off-task as any kid who’s supposed to be learning the 9 times table. (Actually, let’s make that the 7 or 8 times table. Nine is much easier.)

It’s a great book. But I haven’t actually *read* it. I’ve listened to it.

I can sew or knit and, if it’s not a difficult pattern, also listen to an audiobook. And I can certainly clean house or do yard work and listen to podcasts. Unless … I get distracted. I might find the tape, which should be back in the desk, or, was it the tape from the chest where I keep the gift-wrapping supplies? And when I get there, I discover that the Sharpies are missing, so I do go to the desk to get Sharpies to replace the ones in the chest, and then I see that the gift tags I had made are depleted, so I take the ones I have left to my desk to remind me to make new ones, later, and, then I discover that I have COMPLETELY lost track of the plot of the book I’ve been listening to! The same thing happens in the yard, only it involves hoes and rakes and spades and weeds. And clippers, and the yard waste bin, and the songs the birds are singing, and the sound of the bell at the school down the street, and, wow, I remember how I loved to hear that bell at the end of the school day, at that very same school, and I was a crossing guard when I was a sixth grader, and helped kids cross the street safely, and … you get the idea. Many weeds have been pulled and the green bin is full, but I have no idea what Paul actually meant in 2 Corinthians.

I also listen to books in the car. I’ll be driving along and see a billboard, which makes me think of some shopping I need to do, and what’s my schedule this week, and should I do it now or later, and really, I’m so sorry that the big fabric store has moved way out to the Marketplace and I’ll have to go to the nearer one, which really, is better for me because it’s not so big, and I’m not quite so tempted to buy things I don’t really need, and, all of a sudden, I realize the words coming from the car are saying something like, “We’re afraid Mark knows more than he’s saying about the problem,” and I think, “Mark? Who’s Mark?” And I’ve missed pages of information, and I have to punch the back button several times to find a part of the story I recognize. (FYI-It’s way more difficult to navigate your way back through an audiobook than it is to flip back pages in a printed book to find sentences you recognize.)

The artist cannot wail at the musician, “I have no need for you,” nor could the writer bellow at the print engineer, “I won’t go one more word with you.”

When we open the jigsaw puzzle box on Christmas afternoon, to get to work, we’re going to want all the pieces to feel like we’ve truly completed the puzzle. God feels that way about all of us, too. The ABC’s and the XYZ’s. The ADD’s and the PHD’s. And everybody in between.

Here’s a story Jeremy thought I should include: As I was working on this, I decided I needed some suggestions for a particular descriptive phrase. I deleted what I had in a sentence and got out my phone to make a quick call to him. When I punched it on, I saw that there were two new “Words with Friends” moves, so I checked those out and added my own new words to the boards. Then I dialed  (or rather, punched in) Jeremy’s number. Before he even answered his phone, I realized that I no longer recalled what I wanted to ask him. But he did answer his phone and I had to admit that I’d forgotten exactly why I called. We had a nice chat while he was getting his Subway sandwich and walking back to work. I described what I was writing about (being distracted), and he found it pretty amusing that I so easily was proving my point. I finally had to let him go back to work, and I said I’d e-mail when I remembered why I wanted his input. We said goodbye, I punched off, and I went back to work. I read through the last thing I had written, and there was the cursor, and there was the space where the phrase belonged that I wanted help with. So, I e-mailed it to him and he gave me a suggestion, and, well, there you go. Attention Distraction Dis-whateveria.