Our autobiographical lives!

Over the summer, I went driving up to my favorite Sahalie Falls with a friend.  As we neared the destination, I told her I couldn't talk anymore because I simply find it impossible to chat, drive, and watch out for the left turn all at once.

I am only one better than Gerry Ford, about whom the joke was that he couldn't chew gum and jog at the same time.

Recently, when another friend was visiting, I told him I needed to focus on scrambling the eggs, and not talk while doing that, because, well, I cannot multitask.  The eggs turned out well, but I couldn't convince him that it was not any false modesty and that I was being serious about not being a multitasker.  

Earlier today, students were working in teams on a task I had assigned them about the atrocious negative stereotyping of Africa.  As I chatted with one group, the student seemed like she lost her thoughts that she was jotting down because I was talking.  I joked with the team that I thought women were experts at multitasking.  "Oh, you are stereotyping the female gender" was the wink-wink funny response.

I like to think that my inability to multitask is a result of the lessons that were drilled into my head (metaphorically speaking, of course!) when I was young.  "Eat while you eat, and play while you play" the elders always commanded.  "Do one thing at a time, and do it well" they advised.  

The most obedient kid that ever was, I practiced that art of doing only one thing at a time, whether or not I did that well.  Thus, I never learnt to multitask.  It is not my fault--I blame my parents and grandmothers, as always, of course ;)

As I get older, even that ability to do one thing at a time will be lost.  As I sit drooling, half-asleep, and mumbling to myself--like how I am at faculty meetings even now--I won't be multitasking, and not single-tasking, but this:

More on the New Yorker cartoonists and their autobiographical cartoons