2650 A certain lack of focus

Thursday, November 5, 2009

Science is neither a method nor a body of knowledge.
It is a body of changing, learned opinion, aspiring to be true.
There are certain facts about nature and history;
our grasp of those facts is constantly changing.
-- George Santayana --

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Dinner with Mensans last night. I screwed up figuring my portion of the bill, had to apologize this morning to others who contributed more money to cover the bill, and I feel like an idiot, especially after thinking that my neighbor at dinner was a bit of an idiot.

Because there were six of us, the tip, $23, had automatically been added to the tab, and the woman sitting next to me said, several times, that rather than figure out individual portions of the tip, we should just split it, at $3 each. I pointed out, several times, that 6 times $3 is not $23.

We do have a couple of gossips in the group, who will talk about anyone who isn't there. I often wonder what they say about me. Anyway, (I'll call her Prof) Prof came up. Prof is a thorn in the side to some of the group. They wish she'd go away. They don't know how to deal with her. In the middle of the latest complaints, she walked in. She wasn't on the list of expected attendees. She'd been at the Vassar campus across the street and just decided to drop in.

She has a doctorate in something like biochemistry. She comments knowledgeably on a variety of topics. She's a really nice person, not a nasty bone in her body, relentlessly cheerful and chatty, and wants to do her part for the group. However, she's mentally somewhere off in left field, and she doesn't seem to "get it". Ever.

Prof schedules lectures, and panel discussions, and documentary movie nights, and wonders why nobody from the group goes to them. All the group seems to be interested in is food, games, and field trips, and she doesn't get it. I feel sorry for her, because she keeps on trying.

Anyway, she was talking last night about how she has hit several deer, three I think, in the past three years, and how she's afraid of hitting another. Also about sliding on slick roads, and a few other accidents. (She used to wear very thick glasses, and wears none now after having had laser eye surgery a few years ago. I think she's still half blind and doesn't realize it.) So she "never drives over 45 mph", and always 5-10 mph under the speed limit everywhere.

A few minutes later, she was complaining about tailgaters. People are always climbing on her tail. She hates how their headlights behind her make it even harder to see deer on the side of the road.

She really doesn't get it.

Nobody else paid any attention to her last night. She'd be talking and someone else would interrupt as if she wasn't speaking, start up another topic, and everyone would turn away from her. Since she was next to me and I felt sorry for the way people were treating her, I did pay attention to her. And then something occurred to me. I noticed that she ordered an appetizer without realizing it was not an entree. The deer thing. The getting lost driving. The dividing the tip thing. Some other stuff.

Like when she schedules events in the newsletter or online group, she ALWAYS gets the date wrong (right day of the week but wrong number, or vice-versa), or leaves out something important, like the time, or the location. Always! Every. single. time. without exception.

Others think she's stupidly oblivious. I think she's too smart, and her problem is not stupidity, but a lack of focus leading to obliviousness. She's scattered. Not an ADD-type thing, just no focus. Every thought is a skim across the top, without ripples, without focus.

Her mind works like flat stones skipping across a frozen pond.

I wonder if her near blindness through most of her life contributed? She spend most of the past 50 years with her nose 2 inches from a book page. Can straining to focus in one area contribute to a lack of focus everywhere else?
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