Multitasking

I used to be an absolute world-class multitasker, and I’m not talking about just two things at one time. I’m talking about triple, quadruple, and quintuple tasking. What I could get done in the course of the day was really pretty amazing if I do say so myself. It wasn’t my choice. It’s just the way it was. There are only so many hours in a day. Not that I can claim to have done justice to all of it, but I did at least somehow get everything done. There was a time when I could simultaneously scrambled eggs, pour juice, belt out a complex set of instructions to each of my children, compose a grocery list in my head, and hope like heck that I could remember it long enough to jot it down when I had a free hand. I get tired just thinking about it, and don’t even get me started on what it was like at work. That’s another story altogether.

I have to confess that there were times when my nonstop multitasking did have some disastrous consequences. I’m remembering in particular that one day years ago when I decided to do some gardening and took my three very small children out into the backyard with me. I locked the gate securely so that no one could escape and got to work. Pretty soon a neighbor strolled by and stopped to chat. So there I was trying to dig in the garden, keep an eye on the children, and carry on a conversation all at the same time when I suddenly realized that one of my little ones was missing. Then I noticed that the back door was slightly ajar. There was a three year old on the loose in my house! No good could ever come of that.

to be continued…