I had done no such thing, so his manner perplexed me. “What’s his problem?” I wondered, unsure of what faux pas I could have committed. I looked at the ground to avoid his glare, and it was then that I noticed my outfit. The man was staring at me because I was standing in a Wendy’s restaurant wearing a full tuxedo.
Sadly, this story is not an example of a rare scatterbrained moment. Things like this happen to me daily. I write today’s column not to celebrate my absent-minded nature, but to warn friends and family that the weird things I do are not necessarily my fault. It takes roughly five seconds of daydreaming for me to completely forget what I’m wearing, the location where I’m standing, and pretty much every detail about my surroundings. It’s a genuine miracle that I can actually hold down a steady job or maintain any sort of meaningful human relations.
Roughly two or three times per hour, my brain just stops focusing and drifts off into a land of puppy dogs and shiny things, and when it returns, I find myself accidentally washing my hair with body wash, or driving to the shopping mall when I meant to drive to the supermarket.
I have driven halfway to work still wearing my pajamas. I have taken the bus to the mall, shopped for 15 minutes, and then spent 30 minutes trying to find my non-existent car in the parking garage. I have taken someone else’s lunch from the fridge at work and consumed three-fourths of it, only to realize that the roast beef sandwich I’ve been eating is not, in fact, the turkey sandwich I brought. One time I put in my contact lenses, fell back asleep, and then woke up and tried to put in a second pair of contact lenses.
This is the sort of weirdness I’m up against, reader. If I’m so flakey that I can’t even tell whether I’m wearing my contact lenses or not, it’s hard to imagine me doing anything with my life other than cleaning gas station toilets or getting paid to donate blood and sperm.
Like an Alzheimer’s patient, my mind just tends to wander, often threatening to never come back. I estimate that in an average day, my absent-mindedness wastes anywhere from 20 minutes to a full hour of my time. If I didn’t have a mind like a sieve, I’d probably be a really successful man with a steady job, proper health benefits, and a house full of things marking my success.
Instead, the majority of my days are spent fixing things I’ve inadvertently done wrong. Forty minutes will be spent trying to get back a $20 bill I accidentally fed into a Pepsi machine. Hours will be spent driving back home after realizing I’ve worn slippers to work instead of dress shoes. Sometimes entire mornings will be spent mentally retracing my steps to try to remember if I applied deodorant before leaving the house.
The problem gets even worse early in the morning, when I’m groggy from sleep. When I awaken each morning, it will sometimes take five minutes before I even realize I’m in my apartment. It’s not unusual for me to mistake a Wednesday for a Sunday, or think a holiday is actually an entirely different holiday.
Other people I know have claimed to be equally absent-minded, but that statement is usually retracted once they hang out with me for a few hours. Misplacing your keys once in a while is quite a bit different than driving to work and then taking the bus home because you forgot that you drove to work.
A wise man once said to find the benefits, no matter how small, in each of your flaws. I’ve spent a long time trying to find a benefit in my absent-mindedness, but other than not being able to remember state secrets when terrorists kidnap and torture me, I’m hard-pressed to come up with much.
My only hope is someday a movie producer will see me riding a city bus without pants on, and my explanation for how I forgot to wear pants will lead to some sort of movie about my embarrassing life. I won’t be holding my breath for any movie deals, though. Even if I wanted to hold my breath, I’d probably forget why I was doing it halfway through.
I’ve lived in Los Angeles for nearly three years now, and while I’m obviously obscenely handsome and devastatingly interesting, I don’t have a girlfriend. My friends have asked why, my co-workers have asked why, and my parents call me once every two weeks to inquire as to whether I’m gay, and if I am, as to exactly how gay I might be.