If an apple falls close to a tree, will either of them ever notice?
That’s what I’ve been wondering this past week.
My husband is one of the smartest people I know, but he is notoriously forgetful. He used to blame this on his military training and something people in uniform like to call “compartmentalization.”
The idea of compartmentalization stems from the handling of sensitive information, where facts are limited to just the people who need to know them. But the term is also used in the military to describe a person’s ability to mentally block out some information in order to concentrate on the task at hand. When you’re flying off an aircraft carrier, you can’t also ruminate about last night’s argument with your spouse.
So, basically, Dustin gets hyper focused on a task — usually his work— and everything else fades into the background. After a day of flying, if you ask him, “What did you think about today?” he will answer honestly, “Flying, why?” There literally is nothing else going through his brain except his job.
As for me, well, I can do 400 tasks at once and still make room to worry about our children, but maybe not tell you the square root of anything. Not ever. I can write this column and simultaneously wonder when the dog’s next heart worm pill is due. So I tend to get annoyed with Dustin.
His forgetfulness is the basis of almost all of our fights. Some couples fight about money, we fight about whatever Dustin blocked from his mind while he was compartmentalizing. And yet, although I groan about these instances, the stories of Dustin’s forgetfulness have become legend.
There was the time in flight school when he drove almost an hour north on I-95, when he was supposed to being going south, because he was rehearsing emergency procedures in his mind. Then there was the time he lost his keys (he’s forever losing his keys) in a field, and, long story short, ended up having police dogs search for them.
And, of course, no one will ever forget the time he took our young sons to the wrong Chick Fil A for their own birthday party. He called me (at the right Chick Fil A) and said, “The good news is that I have the boys and I’m on time. The bad news is that I’m at the wrong Chick Fil A.”
Lately, I’m seeing these same tendencies in our oldest son, Ford. He’s the other smartest person I know. Ford took his brothers to get milkshakes once and got lost — three times in a row. Each time he wound up at the wrong place, Ford retraced his steps, drove back home and tried again.
I was getting live updates from his younger brother, Owen, throughout the whole ordeal: “We wound up at a car dealership, not the ice cream store. Oh, wait, he’s driving back home now. OK, now we are trying again. Annnnnnd, now we’re in Brewer. He’s coming back home to try again.”
Owen, by the way, is the exact opposite. He can tell you what he ate five years ago on the full moon, and he will instantly notice if I’ve changed something in the house. Ford can’t tell you what he had for lunch yesterday (even though he will ace any quiz about WWII), and it once took Dustin weeks to notice that I bought a new couch. Sometimes, Owen and I make bets about how long it will take Ford or Dustin to notice certain things like, for instance, they are wearing the wrong pants or have on two different shoes.
Last week, one of our cars (the “blue one”) was in the shop. Ford knew this because Dustin drove the older boys to school in our other car, a truck. But the blue car was ready by the time Dustin picked up Ford and Owen in it at 2 p.m.
When Ford walked through the door at 2:15, he asked me, “Is the blue car still in the shop?”
I thought the blue car was in the driveway, so I sighed. “Ford, you just walked right past the blue car to get into the house! Honestly, how did you not notice it?”
Owen was walking up behind him. “It’s worse than that, Mom,” he said. “Ford just rode home in the blue car.”
“I did?” Ford said, puzzled.
Dustin came in soon after, and, noticing my look of exasperation, patted his pant’s pockets to make sure he had the keys.
When I told him about Ford, he just laughed, probably because he was relieved it wasn’t him this time. Then Dustin got very serious: “We need to make Ford less forgetful,” he said.
I rolled my eyes and later made a bet with Owen: Exactly how long until Ford and Dustin realize they are exactly the same?
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