I DRIFT
I DRIFT
Sometimes I drift. My mind wanders, travels, compulsively, frequently, spontaneously, and of its own accord, to a familiar and nearby place where it busies itself counting and averaging, arranging and cataloging. The condition has been diagnosed as Attention Deficit Disorder but it’s hardly disorderly. My mind tidies up and organizes the clutter perceived around it. I sense it’s closer to autism or obsessional neurosis, that I missed being one of these special people by just a little. To those close to me it’s apparent when this has happened. It’s as though little Out of Order signs, hanging askew, have suddenly appeared where my eyes, moments earlier alert, attentive, and inquiring but now glazed over, had been.
At meetings, where I find myself too often, I’m sometimes useless. Now and then I can be seen from the podium, sitting there with my eyes open but apparently asleep. I’m sure it’s disconcerting for the speaker, but while I am not asleep, I am engaged elsewhere. I have lost interest in what’s going on and am now memorizing the names of the participants and arranging them alphabetically by last name, by first name, maybe by both. If time permits and something doesn’t happen to jolt me back to the business at hand I will continue in orbit and assign the alpha characters of their names a numerical value (A=1, Z =26) and then average them. Occasionally I can come up with an acronym from the average for those assembled. At a recent meeting the acronym revealed was, interestingly, ‘dithering’.
While driving, if conversation is lagging or there’s nothing interesting on the radio, I’m soon assigning numeric values to the alpha characters of passing license plates, trying to average them along with the numeric characters and then solving for the resulting two digit alpha-numeric answer, 893KPL = 7M, before the vehicle has passed from view. If you see me coming it would be safer for you and easier for me if you slowed down a little. I usually present thumbs up when I’ve got the answer.
The average height of the seventy-three people encountered during a stroll from one end of Main Street to the other, at around noon on a Tuesday in early August last year was, I’m guessing about the height of course but am sure of the average, five foot 8. These were the adults. I excluded the children, actually tried to do them simultaneously and separately but failed miserably. I made a note to try again next August but it will have to be same time, noon, on the same day, the 7th.
Generally folks don’t know that I have this compulsion, an obsessive nature. In fact, the average age of those who do know is fifty-four. This is a fluid number of course, changing now and then as someone else is taken into my confidence. That will change dramatically today, having spoken these 486 words.