Multi-tasking
I read an article in a newspaper about how people are overusing their electronic gadgets-using too many at once, using them constantly, not letting their brains rest-which in the grand scheme of things may or may not be bad for you. I’m not sure what newspaper it was. I’d like to say it was the Times, because it will make me sound smarter and it’s not unlikely, given that we have copies of the Times at work, but it just as easily could have been a Village Voice or a Metro or an AM that someone left on the seat of the train and that I picked up out of boredom-because I, like everyone in the article, am unable to just sit quietly with my thoughts.
When I read the article, I nodded critically through the first paragraph, which described a woman using an elliptical machine who was simultaneously watching TV, listening to her iPod and checking her e-mail.
“Not good,” I thought. “If I were on an elliptical machine,” I said to myself, “I would be content just to think really deep thoughts and be at peace with myself and not do any of that nonsense like the woman in the article.” Reading articles about people who are overly dependent on technology arouses a bizarre self-righteous streak, based on the fact that my iPod is broken and I have not gone to fix it-ignoring the fact that the reasons I have not fixed it have much more to do with laziness than with an aversion to using it. Also, I remind myself, the woman in the article is self-motivated enough to go to the gym and use the elliptical machine. Still, I think-I must be a little bit better than she is. Somehow.
Today a woman on a bicycle rode past me-her phone pinned to her ear with her shoulder, having a conversation that did not even appear to be that important. I do not even listen to my iPod while I ride my bike because I would crash into a storefront window within 45 seconds, and I have never ridden my bike while watching TV and checking my e-mail, but again-I remind myself that I have done other things that might not be shown in a cycling safety video and that might be looked upon by my mother with displeasure. Jumping to mind immediately is my experience the other day riding my bike in traffic, which is dangerous to begin with, but I was certainly not helping matters by balancing an eleven gallon plastic garbage can from Bed Bath and Beyond on the tiny handlebar basket that was designed to hold quaint bags of locally grown Macintosh apples or fresh baguettes or impulsive tulip purchases.
And if you absolutely must balance a garbage can on your handlebars, let it be empty, rather than stuffed with your rain jacket and an umbrella and two packs of Ghirardelli peanut butter and chocolate squares and a bottle of shampoo and a toilet brush from the dollar store. There can be something romantic about a person on a bicycle, but the image of a young girl riding carefree down Parisian city streets is painfully incongruent with what I was attempting. I had placed the garbage can’s base in the bike basket and had tipped it back so that it was resting at a 45 degree angle. My hands gripped the handlebars, but my index fingers were outstretched in a feeble attempt to keep the garbage can from shifting side to side, and I was wearing my purple and blue Headwinds! helmet that was really cool looking when Pam got it for Christmas back in 1993, but which now made me look like a psychedelically-colored toadstool, struggling to balance the plastic monolith of a garbage can, navigating along a street with only slightly fewer craters than the moon.
This extremely precarious situation, which seemed as though it would end in a puddle of exploded shampoo and blood and Ghirardelli chocolate littered with plastic garbage can shards ended with me arriving home safely, incident free, with a completely intact garbage can in under 5 minutes.
Now here is another situation. I am walking out of the Brooklyn Bridge subway stop in the early evening. I am sending a text to a friend-so first off, there goes my claim at technological self-righteousness-I am walking while sending text messages that are not even that important. I am sending a text about how my tooth is falling apart, which is both true and painful and I don’t have much to say about it now other than, “brush your teeth, kids,” which will do nothing to persuade any generation of children to brush their teeth. Very few things will get kids to brush their teeth. Jonathan brushes religiously and never eats sugary candy and when I asked why he does that he said that when he was young he had a hot, blonde, Brazilian dentist who wore high heels to work and who made him swear he would stop eating candy after he needed 6 fillings over the course of a summer.
“When you’re a thirteen year old boy and your unbelievably sexy dentist tells you to stop eating candy, you just stop,” he explained.
So on a totally unrelated note-if you are trying to keep your children from ruining their teeth, there’s your answer. Hot dentists. After all the time and money wasted on promotional materials for Fluoride and high-end toothbrushes, the one thing that gets kids to brush regularly is a reminder from someone who looks like a Brazillian soap opera protagonist but whose name is followed by the letters D.D.S.
But it’s far too late for me and I was sending a text about how my tooth was falling apart and how much money I will have to spend in the upcoming years on dental work, and then following it with another text about the other ways in which I could have spent the money. (Vacations and real estate and large philanthropic donations to agencies that help children with cleft lip palates). And I looked up from the second text and put the phone away, in my pocket. But my mind was still elsewhere-that was the problem. My mind was still swirling through the future of my teeth and my dental work and the various types of pain I would have to endure and why it was so hard for me to stop eating family-size packs of Twizzlers when other people my age do not seem to be buying Twizzlers with the same relative frequency with which I myself purchase them. I was juggling all of this in my mind and was waiting to feel my pocket vibrate from my friend’s return text, and was running my tongue over my back molar in disappointment when, without warning, I walked directly into a man’s stomach.
I say specifically that I walked into a man’s stomach rather than “I walked right into someone,” because the experiences are different. To walk right into someone involves a bony, painful collision-a jagged tangle of the sharp-angled limbs of New Yorkers, but to walk into someone’s stomach is a softer experience-like being in a moon bounce, or like the comfort of your head hitting the pillow except instead of your head it is your whole body and instead of a pillow it is a man in a striped pink and yellow and white dress shirt who is ridiculously embarrassed because he was not really paying attention to where he was going either.
I remember exactly what he looked like, because he looked like a Japanese version of William Shatner, which was a jarring enough image to lodge itself in my short term memory. He had a jolly, rotund appearance, which are not adjectives that usually come to mind when I am describing Japanese people, but perhaps that was why he was walking through downtown Manhattan, distracted-he had been ousted from his homeland by a coalition of thin, severe, business-like Japanese people who forbade him to return until he had lost weight and adopted a less jovial outlook on existence. He was walking toward me, his expression happy but wistful, staring out at the entrance to the Brooklyn Bridge. And I continued walking toward him, thinking, “He is going to move. At any second he is going to swerve to avoid hitting me, so I will just keep going straight. And we both continued walking toward each other at our constant speeds, like the trains in that math problem that left New York and Chicago at 1:05AM and 5:24AM respectively, and which are bound to meet in the middle at an undisclosed time. And when we were separated by a distance of no more than five feet he swiveled his head forward and noticed me but the shock of eye contact prevented either of us from moving off course at all, and that is when I walked directly into his stomach.
And one stereotype I have formed based on the Japanese people I have met is that they are extremely polite. And politeness being one of the few things my mother tried to teach me that took root (as opposed to, perhaps, not riding your bicycle with an eleven gallon garbage can balanced on the handlebars) I am also overly apologetic when I accidentally bump into people. And so I hit his stomach and began bouncing backward, away from him, and his face contorted with what seemed like unimaginable grief and he began crying out, “I’msoh-ree I’msoh-ree I’msoh-ree!” and I began saying, “Oh my god, I’m so sorry! Oh my god, I’m so sorry!” And he extended his open palms toward me, fingers outstretched, as if to demonstrate that he held no ill will in his hands and said again, “I’msoh-ree I’msoh-ree!” And I said “I’m SO sorry! I’m SO sorry!” and we both nodded and continued walking past each other.
And I don’t know that I learned anything from walking into him, since I’m certainly not going to stop texting while I walk. Emailing and listening to an iPod while on the elliptical-that I wouldn’t start since anyone who would do that is so obviously dependent on their devices and can’t just relax and enjoy the experience of being alive and it’s sad, isn’t it? For those people? But not me. I’m fine. I have no problems with trying to do too many things at once or with technology or with dependency. I’m totally fine. I bumped into one Japanese guy but that’s not a huge deal. But it was funny when it happened, which is why I decided to text my friend to let her know what had just happened. And as I texted I casually went through the turnstile for the PATH train, except that if you are busy texting someone about your funny encounter walking into a Japanese guy you will forget to swipe your card at the turnstile, and if you don’t swipe your card it is not so much a “turnstile” as it is a “vagina-smashing machine.”
And walking into a non-moving turnstile at full force is not like walking into a man’s soft belly. It is like someone hitting you in the genitals with a bat. Which is different. And painful. And may have done permanent damage. Although if you’re really worried about wearing out your body and doing permanent damage, the elliptical machine is supposed to be great for that-you can get a full day’s exercise with very little pressure on the knees and joints and if you’re so inclined you can go through your e-mail, watch TV, listen to your iPod, and check your text messages in case your idiot friend has sent you another message, telling you to guess what head-on collision she encountered today. You can laugh about it from your elliptical machine.
When I read the article, I nodded critically through the first paragraph, which described a woman using an elliptical machine who was simultaneously watching TV, listening to her iPod and checking her e-mail.
“Not good,” I thought. “If I were on an elliptical machine,” I said to myself, “I would be content just to think really deep thoughts and be at peace with myself and not do any of that nonsense like the woman in the article.” Reading articles about people who are overly dependent on technology arouses a bizarre self-righteous streak, based on the fact that my iPod is broken and I have not gone to fix it-ignoring the fact that the reasons I have not fixed it have much more to do with laziness than with an aversion to using it. Also, I remind myself, the woman in the article is self-motivated enough to go to the gym and use the elliptical machine. Still, I think-I must be a little bit better than she is. Somehow.
Today a woman on a bicycle rode past me-her phone pinned to her ear with her shoulder, having a conversation that did not even appear to be that important. I do not even listen to my iPod while I ride my bike because I would crash into a storefront window within 45 seconds, and I have never ridden my bike while watching TV and checking my e-mail, but again-I remind myself that I have done other things that might not be shown in a cycling safety video and that might be looked upon by my mother with displeasure. Jumping to mind immediately is my experience the other day riding my bike in traffic, which is dangerous to begin with, but I was certainly not helping matters by balancing an eleven gallon plastic garbage can from Bed Bath and Beyond on the tiny handlebar basket that was designed to hold quaint bags of locally grown Macintosh apples or fresh baguettes or impulsive tulip purchases.
And if you absolutely must balance a garbage can on your handlebars, let it be empty, rather than stuffed with your rain jacket and an umbrella and two packs of Ghirardelli peanut butter and chocolate squares and a bottle of shampoo and a toilet brush from the dollar store. There can be something romantic about a person on a bicycle, but the image of a young girl riding carefree down Parisian city streets is painfully incongruent with what I was attempting. I had placed the garbage can’s base in the bike basket and had tipped it back so that it was resting at a 45 degree angle. My hands gripped the handlebars, but my index fingers were outstretched in a feeble attempt to keep the garbage can from shifting side to side, and I was wearing my purple and blue Headwinds! helmet that was really cool looking when Pam got it for Christmas back in 1993, but which now made me look like a psychedelically-colored toadstool, struggling to balance the plastic monolith of a garbage can, navigating along a street with only slightly fewer craters than the moon.
This extremely precarious situation, which seemed as though it would end in a puddle of exploded shampoo and blood and Ghirardelli chocolate littered with plastic garbage can shards ended with me arriving home safely, incident free, with a completely intact garbage can in under 5 minutes.
Now here is another situation. I am walking out of the Brooklyn Bridge subway stop in the early evening. I am sending a text to a friend-so first off, there goes my claim at technological self-righteousness-I am walking while sending text messages that are not even that important. I am sending a text about how my tooth is falling apart, which is both true and painful and I don’t have much to say about it now other than, “brush your teeth, kids,” which will do nothing to persuade any generation of children to brush their teeth. Very few things will get kids to brush their teeth. Jonathan brushes religiously and never eats sugary candy and when I asked why he does that he said that when he was young he had a hot, blonde, Brazilian dentist who wore high heels to work and who made him swear he would stop eating candy after he needed 6 fillings over the course of a summer.
“When you’re a thirteen year old boy and your unbelievably sexy dentist tells you to stop eating candy, you just stop,” he explained.
So on a totally unrelated note-if you are trying to keep your children from ruining their teeth, there’s your answer. Hot dentists. After all the time and money wasted on promotional materials for Fluoride and high-end toothbrushes, the one thing that gets kids to brush regularly is a reminder from someone who looks like a Brazillian soap opera protagonist but whose name is followed by the letters D.D.S.
But it’s far too late for me and I was sending a text about how my tooth was falling apart and how much money I will have to spend in the upcoming years on dental work, and then following it with another text about the other ways in which I could have spent the money. (Vacations and real estate and large philanthropic donations to agencies that help children with cleft lip palates). And I looked up from the second text and put the phone away, in my pocket. But my mind was still elsewhere-that was the problem. My mind was still swirling through the future of my teeth and my dental work and the various types of pain I would have to endure and why it was so hard for me to stop eating family-size packs of Twizzlers when other people my age do not seem to be buying Twizzlers with the same relative frequency with which I myself purchase them. I was juggling all of this in my mind and was waiting to feel my pocket vibrate from my friend’s return text, and was running my tongue over my back molar in disappointment when, without warning, I walked directly into a man’s stomach.
I say specifically that I walked into a man’s stomach rather than “I walked right into someone,” because the experiences are different. To walk right into someone involves a bony, painful collision-a jagged tangle of the sharp-angled limbs of New Yorkers, but to walk into someone’s stomach is a softer experience-like being in a moon bounce, or like the comfort of your head hitting the pillow except instead of your head it is your whole body and instead of a pillow it is a man in a striped pink and yellow and white dress shirt who is ridiculously embarrassed because he was not really paying attention to where he was going either.
I remember exactly what he looked like, because he looked like a Japanese version of William Shatner, which was a jarring enough image to lodge itself in my short term memory. He had a jolly, rotund appearance, which are not adjectives that usually come to mind when I am describing Japanese people, but perhaps that was why he was walking through downtown Manhattan, distracted-he had been ousted from his homeland by a coalition of thin, severe, business-like Japanese people who forbade him to return until he had lost weight and adopted a less jovial outlook on existence. He was walking toward me, his expression happy but wistful, staring out at the entrance to the Brooklyn Bridge. And I continued walking toward him, thinking, “He is going to move. At any second he is going to swerve to avoid hitting me, so I will just keep going straight. And we both continued walking toward each other at our constant speeds, like the trains in that math problem that left New York and Chicago at 1:05AM and 5:24AM respectively, and which are bound to meet in the middle at an undisclosed time. And when we were separated by a distance of no more than five feet he swiveled his head forward and noticed me but the shock of eye contact prevented either of us from moving off course at all, and that is when I walked directly into his stomach.
And one stereotype I have formed based on the Japanese people I have met is that they are extremely polite. And politeness being one of the few things my mother tried to teach me that took root (as opposed to, perhaps, not riding your bicycle with an eleven gallon garbage can balanced on the handlebars) I am also overly apologetic when I accidentally bump into people. And so I hit his stomach and began bouncing backward, away from him, and his face contorted with what seemed like unimaginable grief and he began crying out, “I’msoh-ree I’msoh-ree I’msoh-ree!” and I began saying, “Oh my god, I’m so sorry! Oh my god, I’m so sorry!” And he extended his open palms toward me, fingers outstretched, as if to demonstrate that he held no ill will in his hands and said again, “I’msoh-ree I’msoh-ree!” And I said “I’m SO sorry! I’m SO sorry!” and we both nodded and continued walking past each other.
And I don’t know that I learned anything from walking into him, since I’m certainly not going to stop texting while I walk. Emailing and listening to an iPod while on the elliptical-that I wouldn’t start since anyone who would do that is so obviously dependent on their devices and can’t just relax and enjoy the experience of being alive and it’s sad, isn’t it? For those people? But not me. I’m fine. I have no problems with trying to do too many things at once or with technology or with dependency. I’m totally fine. I bumped into one Japanese guy but that’s not a huge deal. But it was funny when it happened, which is why I decided to text my friend to let her know what had just happened. And as I texted I casually went through the turnstile for the PATH train, except that if you are busy texting someone about your funny encounter walking into a Japanese guy you will forget to swipe your card at the turnstile, and if you don’t swipe your card it is not so much a “turnstile” as it is a “vagina-smashing machine.”
And walking into a non-moving turnstile at full force is not like walking into a man’s soft belly. It is like someone hitting you in the genitals with a bat. Which is different. And painful. And may have done permanent damage. Although if you’re really worried about wearing out your body and doing permanent damage, the elliptical machine is supposed to be great for that-you can get a full day’s exercise with very little pressure on the knees and joints and if you’re so inclined you can go through your e-mail, watch TV, listen to your iPod, and check your text messages in case your idiot friend has sent you another message, telling you to guess what head-on collision she encountered today. You can laugh about it from your elliptical machine.