“If a situation requires undivided attention, it will occur simultaneously with a compelling distraction.” — Hutchinson’s Law
Has your mind ever been hijacked by a stray thought, really hijacked so that you stopping doing whatever you were right in the middle of, oftentimes something very important, and just sat there, apparently helpless, and stared into space so you could entertain the thought.
Happens to me all the time. And typically the stray thought isn’t even a very important one. In fact, it’s usually very trivial, like how good it felt to finally trim back a big toenail that was so rotten and started to hurt. Or the time I called my third-grade teacher “mom.”
Yes, there’s nothing that says “senility” like losing all your higher cognitive functions to just any random thought that dances across the synapses of your brain cells. It’s the mental version of incontinence, only there’s no Depends for it. You have to wipe the drool off your lower lip with your handkerchief and trust your friends and coworkers not to say anything about it.
This Is Drivel 