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there’s a hole in my brain
Several years ago I was working in the office of a very senior public official – a Member of Parliament, actually - just doing a bit of temporary administrative support work, and I was given the task of writing a letter to a constituent. I was given rough guidelines for what to write, and I sat at my desk and composed a really well written letter, if I do say so myself.
So I wrote this great letter to the constituent and then showed it to my boss, the MP’s Executive Assistant. She read it, said it was terrific, then pointed out the glaring mistake.
I had printed it upside down a sheet of letterhead.
This is just one example of hundreds of small errors I have made in my life because I am seemingly incapable of mastering the art of paying Attention To Detail. This is where I consistently, continuously fail. I copy down the wrong number. I make the wrong coffee. I forget to call the guy back. I don’t tick the right box. I order the wrong photographs from the print lab. I double-book the kids into haircuts and tennis lessons. I don’t check the exposure on the image before I click…
I know that everyone forgets things from time to time but I’m quite convinced that I have a special talent for this kind of thing. Working in the Cafe for six months confirmed it for me: some of the mistakes could be blamed on a communication break-down or simple misunderstanding but there were plenty of times when I would suddenly realise that, for example, I hadn’t put the right price tag on all the new packets of pasta that I had just priced for the store. I would look at the price guide, then look at the price-gun thing, and wonder how on earth I managed to get that wrong.
There’s nothing like a small error to make you feel like a BIG idiot.
It’s a good thing I’m not a nurse, administering drugs. You know those horror stories about patients getting injected with the wrong drug, or ten times the correct dose? That would be me.
I have the ability to hear instructions, and then forget them as soon as they have been told to me. They literally go in the one ear and out the other. Or as I said to my hubby, whenever I’m out of my ADD meds, just assume that my head is a trampoline. As in, anything he tells me is just going to go BOING and not stick.