MULTI-TASKED

This photo perfectly displays the multi-task discussion that permeates our household from time to time.

It took me years to figure out why I did not like to make the Wal-Mart run with my wife. I should have known after having shopped with her so many times. For example, when she looks for a dress, she rifles so fast through the ones hanging up that I don't know how she even tells whether she likes them or not. I've also seen her stop in the middle of a rack and change course and feel the material in a blouse on another rack ninety degrees away.

So that's what she would do to me at Wal-Mart. I'd be concentrating on finding my Shave Secret shaving oil while she'd spin me around to ask if I wanted Dry Idea or Degree deodorant. She also never considered that there are other shoppers. And they are also armed with carts. End result: dizziness, for me. By the way, I'm not multi-tasked. Never was. Or if I was, it was solely one directional.

So how does she explain her multi-tasking? In her job she dealt with a farm, a newspaper, a golf course, residential and apartment houses, an oil company, an oil-related company, a hotel, a restaurant, a bank, et.al. I know I'm forgetting some others. Her point is that when she picked up the phone, she didn't know which area she would be forced to address. And I'm not talking about just answering the phone and re-directing the problem: for the most part, for many years she had to solve the problem. Plus, when she got home, she had kids and a single-tasked husband to attend to. No wonder she's enjoying retirement.

While she still juggles the multiplicity of various tasks, I'm still single (some would say simple) minded. We still go to Wal-Mart together. I just slow down, don't make all the trips with cart down all those aisles. I especially avoid the detergent/fabric freshener aisle because of the overpowering smell. I don't try to turn the cart on a dime. I now know my limits.

But what I don't understand is why Caroline can't multi-task tv shows. Put a remote in my hand and I can watch four baseball games, one pre-season football game, one golf tournament, and two movies and follow them all. Not my wife. I think her multi-tasking ability is for work and mine for play.