The stupid button

The stupid button. We all have one. And it does not have anything to do with intelligence. A stupid button is more like a brain fart, but I couldn't find a picture of one of those.

A 2010 Harvard study found that the average person's mind wanders 47 percent of the time. Nearly half of your life, you're doing one thing and thinking something else. Compounding that, your distractions have more than quintupled (from 8.2 percent just last February to 35.2 percent in May, likely because of this pandemic and all it brings forward says research done by The Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas... stuff we have never experienced in our lifetime. 

That's us on hyperdrive.

So what does that all mean? Well, it literally means we are not always paying attention to the matter at hand and we are more prone to brain farts and impulsive moments that often come with consequences.

A true story of one of those: A number of years back, my wife an I were on a vacation in our RV.  Pulling our car behind us one rainy dusk evening on our way to the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, we started slowly up a steep incline. On the two-lane road, a car coming toward us crested the hill about 50 yards ahead. Then, out of nowhere, another car started to pass the oncoming car at high speed. I was driving and instinctively hollered "Oh oh, watch out." In a "life -passing-in-front-of-you" moment, I knew there were no viable options for us to get out of the way and I started to brake as hard as I dared while trying to control the RV and tow.

I watched helplessly as the passing car accelerated rapidly. The driver tried to complete the pass and overshot his lane. As he attempted to turn back he lost a tire and any control he might have had. He (and his pregnant girlfriend) T-boned the left front of our RV at high speed.

It was over in 10 seconds or less. 

Being a bigger/taller vehicle, the impact totaled our RV even bending the frame, and badly damaged our tow car, pulling us into a ditch on our left and pinning their car, on edge, between us and the hillside. The airbags and seat belts did their job and we came up shaken but not stirred. It all happened so fast that none of that mili-second was recalled until we pieced it all together in our minds. 

They died instantly as I would see. I leaped from our damaged but upright RV to offer help. I peeked down, into the driver's side broken window of the sandwiched car. One look told the story.

The police worked to comfort us saying that we, in fact, were the real victims. If we had been in a car, they said, we would also be dead. The driver was well known in the area, a speed demon and a 'hot dog.' They knew some day, something bad like this might happen. Sadly, the driver's spur of the moment brain fart cost three lives.

Perhaps not so strange in retrospect, the car being passed was driven by the victim's sister who was carrying the driver's first child, a two-plus year-old boy, safely in an infant seat in the rear. She rushed to the wreckage and seeing the carnage, screamed... then, in panic, hurriedly asked my wife to sit with the little fellow while she rushed up the hill to get cell service and call the parents. 

The little boy kept saying "poor man, poor man" as she sat with him. We were still trying to comprehend it all.

Studies prove no one 'multi-tasks' as good as they may believe they do. But most of us get by, thank God. 

Ever have a moment in your life when you realized 'that car' could have hit you broadside, or perhaps in a lightning storm, you were in the wrong place to be and still 'lived?' Maybe you forgot the name of the person just introduced to you 10 seconds earlier, or locked your keys in the car, or asked "When are you expecting?" when she wasn't, or trying to move the piano by yourself. What were you thinking? Oh, you weren't.

Social media platforms are ideal for brain farts. You post something and seconds later, wish you hadn't, but it is too late. Your brain fart will live forever. When was the last time that happened? Oh, five minutes ago? Good luck.

The reality is that brain farts are real and they have always been with us in big and small ways. General Custer made a Big Horn mistake of judgement and Napoleon met his Waterloo. Businesses often come and go on impulsive decisions.  In our every day world, we grab that first piece of too hot pizza, or open our mouths before we think and are surprised at the words that come out.

Ever have a pandemic and don't wear a mask or social distance? Sometimes you get burned or worse, someone else 'pays' your dues. Every brain fart has a consequence, though most, gratefully, are not consequential. When we lie, when we yell or cuss or are rude or worse... the bell has been rung and it cannot be unrung. 

Best we can do is be mindful... but even then, we are thinking of something else. All of us, wise or not, have a little 'Alfred E. Neuman' in us. "What, me worry?" Thanks to Mad Magazine for showing us what a brain fart looks like.

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