Ever put a couple of marbles in one of those plastic Easter egg containers and watched them roll unpredictably? That’s pretty much a conversation with me. That pretty much sums up what it seems like is going on with my mind—a couple of loose marbles in a small container.
Every Tuesday and Thursday I have a semi-lengthy break in between classes and I end up in conversations with fellow peers and sometimes fellow instructors. We have good discussions, but often times it steers into a completely different direction and I lose whoever is at the receiving end. They have this baffled expression on their face, horribly masked with courtesy, but its apparent to me.
What’s odd is that it never hits me until an hour or so after our discussion—the pieces I leave out, the details i miss or the impression of how much of a complete ass I am. It’s like the other end is getting buckets worth of my stream-of-conscience.
I wouldn’t necessarily say my conversations with people are unfiltered; there are things I can actually catch myself from saying. For the most part, I stick my foot in my mouth, explain something wrong, leave out parts and I just seem crazy. Basically, I’m quite good with making an ass out of myself. Even I embarrass myself.
Then you have the receiving end, the various interpreters, various misinterpreters, the passive audience who smile and nod, or the ADHD audience like myself who just never paid much attention from the start, unless the conversation were interesting.
Regardless, I must admit that I have a wealth of dialog running in my head for the better part of each day. One way of predicting me is how much of a good mood I am in. If I am grumpy, indifferent to anything and everything around me, seemingly emotionless, well, it pretty much means there isn’t much dialog variety happening in the old noggin. My mind needs to keep running or I get bored easily and end up wasting my time by napping or something.
Generally, I’m not too fond of slow days and my “talking to myself” breaks me away from that. Watch me in my GE classes. I’m pretty sure that’s why Kate turns around and checks up on my note-taking every 5 minutes. After class she asks, “Did you pay attention?” I tell her, “Yeah, then I stopped during the last 20 minutes and started imagining the classroom were a virtual Pong arena, while Jimmy Eat World provides the soundtrack.” The class is really shaped like Pong on a widescreen TV. Ohhh Ancient Roman History.
