THE EINSTEIN AWARD

Story one:

A man in our ward was talking to a client the other day. "I have a new cell phone and a new number," he said. "Let me find my the phone and I'll give you the number. Hold on." He then proceeded to try and find the new phone. It wasn't in his office/studio, which is next door to his house. Maybe it was in the house. He kept the man on the line while he searched. Not in the bedroom. Not in the kitchen. Not in the house office. He tried the car. It wasn't in the car. He was frustrated. He looked by the pool. He looked everywhere he could think of. "I'll have to call you back when I find it," he said and went to hang up and found he was talking on the new cell phone.

Story two:

A friend of mine had misplaced her cell phone. She looked everywhere. She had a deadline and needed to leave the house soon. Then she had a brilliant idea, I'll call my cell phone from the home phone, and when it rings I'll be able to find it. So, she called her cell phone. All of a sudden, from across the room her cell phone rang. This irritated her. Now just who could that be! she thought. I don't give my cell phone number to ANYONE.

Story three:

My mom had a friend who went upstairs for something. When she got up there she couldn't remember what it was. She wandered in and out of all the bedrooms, hoping something would jog her memory. Finally she thought, I guess I'll have to go downstairs and see if I can remember. So she went all the way back downstairs and into the kitchen where she was before she went upstairs. And then she remembered. She had gone upstairs to have a nap.

This same friend was taking care of her elderly dad. She kept track of his medications. One pill was for his memory loss, another for arthritis, another for some other condition. There were about six pills in all. She went into the kitchen, got all of the pills he was supposed to take, ran a glass of water and took them herself.

DUMB INC. CHANGING IT'S NAME TO THE EINSTEIN CLUB, PART 2

An alert reader--who is also possibly brilliant--said that it isn't dumbness that gets us into all these rather interesting predicaments--like walking into the men's bathroom--Sheesh!--but rather our minds are so occupied with interesting/perhaps brilliant thoughts that the normal, mundane things go, "whoosh," right over our heads. She called it Einstein-itis. Thanks, Shan. It sounds so much better than feeling dumb.

Here Einstein is in the early years and later, when he got even more interesting. But look at the eyes. Exactly the same.

Einstein was so preoccupied with interesting things that, well, he probably walked into the Ladies bathroom. I heard a story about him once, that reminds me of Kraut. Kraut is also interesting. It is his fault I am a night owl. He was so interesting as a teenager that I couldn't leave and go to bed. Therefore I had a case of terminal sleep deprivation. Now it's a habit.

See how this works? You start with one thought and pretty soon you are galloping off, in a complete different direction.

Back to the story: Einstein was sitting at his desk, visiting with someone and Einstein got thirsty. So he peeled an orange. But his guest was fascinating and their talk was lively and he forgot to eat it. Later, he noticed that he was thirsty. So, he peeled an orange. Then: interesting talk, thirst, orange. By the time he finally realized what he was doing he had seven oranges peeled, and uneaten, on his desk.

Kraut is like that. He gets distracted by interesting things. He once told me he looked a word up in the dictionary and then, because it was surrounded by other interesting words, he didn't get back to what he was doing for a l-o-n-g time. I don't remember for sure but I think it was an hour.

Okay, today's Einstein-ish moment:

The other day I was at Day's Thriftway buying groceries. I ran my card through the terminal. Nothing. I tried again. Nothing. My favorite checker, Shawn, said, "turn it around." I did. Nothing. He took my card and he ran it through. Nothing. He turned it around. Nothing. Then he looked at it, handed it back to me and said, "This is your Border's Reward Card."

I am not alone. My favorite checker is also a member of the Einstein club.

DUMB INC., PART 1

Do you ever feel dumb? I'm going to make you feel better.

Last week I went to the library to check out a zillion books by Claudia Mills, who is an author who will be teaching at the BYU Writer's and Illustrators for Young Readers workshop on June 8-12, 2009. I am going to be Claudia's assistant and want to read all her books the library has. (She's a brilliant author, by the way. You should buy her books for your kids/grandkids.)

While I was at the library I needed to go to the restroom. Funny, I thought, only one stall in the restroom at the library? Surely the library is big enough to have more than one stall? And what's this? A urinal? In the women's restroom?

And then it dawned on me.

Stay tuned tomorrow for another instalment of Dumb Inc., a feature designed to make you feel better about yourself.