PanningForGold

Mrs. B, my favourite high school teacher taught us a few life lessons that have stuck with me through the years.  One of which was to look at life from different perspectives.  She once had us stand on our chairs to get a different perspective of the classroom.  At work, when things get overwhelming I’ll climb one of the big ladders and just look around.  Not only do I get to see things differently sometimes I get a bonus. Just the other day I found a long-lost pen that I would otherwise have never found because I was able to see surfaces I could only see from atop a ladder.

I use several methods to try to see things differently, most common is to take the words people speak at face value.   During these times my wife accuses me of having my literal cape on too tight.   This part of the blog is the observations I make from the safety of my cape.

My wife and I were in a book store and there were two young women standing around. One pointed to a sign and told her friend to read the sign out loud, she did and looked at her friend and said, “so what?” The first girl said “read it again” and started laughing. The sign said ‘Research Aids” I got it right away, granted the sign was not all that funny, but the first girls observation was clever. I’m always looking for that sort of thing and my wife and I are in the book store all the time. However I never picked up on that sign before. I did find it amusing, and slightly amazing that the second girl just didn’t get it at all. I guess that is an insight into me.

Anyway here are a few of my own similar observations.

‘Take one pill twice a day’ is this only odd to me? Should it not read ‘take a pill every 12 hours’? Otherwise I’d have to take one pill throw it up and then take it again.

On directions for making fudge, ‘2 cups of walnut meat’ Come on, did they actually think I was going to toss in a few shells just for kicks?

I read these directions on generic ant-acid tablets. ‘Take two tablets chewed’ Do I have to get somebody to pre-chew them first?

There is a big sign on our road ‘Watch Children’ Are we inviting every pedophile in the county to our street?

If you should ever decide to learn some magic tricks, (run the other way quick!) particularly card tricks invariably you are going to come across this line, deal the cards one at a time onto the table face down I’m telling you now if you take those instructions literally you are probably going to hurt your nose.

I really want to ask a correctional officer if they have an eraser or possibly some liquid paper/whiteout.

I saw a sign, Stainless steel sinks yeah, so what?  all steel sinks.

Here we have a grocery store chain called Giant,  they issue you a ‘bonus’ card for wonderful savings.  When I get to the cashier they usually ask me if I have a Giant Card  when I hand it over for them to scan I like to say, well I have this card that says Giant but its the same size as all my other cards.

Is it only odd to me that only after you have spent countless dollars on the latest piece of software and only after you have broken the seal and loaded the software on your computer are you asked to agree to the licensing terms.  What? after all that am I going to say no?

After I swipe my debit card through a card reader at a retail shop sometimes the little machine asks if the amount is okay.  One day I’m going to say no, it is not okay.