"Half-witted"

I called my lovely wife earlier today. She picked up the phone laughing hilariously. Which is always a wonderful thing to hear. I love it when she laughs. There is nothing I enjoy more. And there's nothing better than a genuine patch of laughter to brighten up your day, even if it was already a good day. Genuine, heart-felt, belly aching laughter is good for the soul.

In the midst of this patch of laughter an explanation emerged which served only to keep the laughter going for a few more minutes. Seems that my wife was multi-tasking at the time the phone rang. She was directing brain cells to lunch preparation, a project on the computer and two or three other things simultaneously. Which is pretty much the story of life in 2009. Multitasking is what most of us do most every day. We regularly dedicate some portion of our brain to each of several projects coming at us in what feels like an insatiable flow of tasks and distractions. Occasionally, however, the river overruns its banks and we find ourselves making humorous little syntax or sequencing errors. In her instance she had said "Hello" before actually picking up the phone. Four year old Molly gave her a puzzled look which in turn gave my wife the giggles which led to the full-bodied laughter I encountered when she realized the humor of it all.

This isn't the first time I've seen this kind of humorous occurrence caused by multi-tasking. I've found keys in the fridge and apples on the dresser and things in my sock drawer that have no good reason for being there. A couple of my kids will on occasion get going so fast that they'll mix up words in a sentence or letters within a word...often with humorous results. All of this is due to the same issue of overloading the river bank.

I suppose that unless somebody is addressing the nation or piloting a commercial jet this kind of stuff is probably harmless. It does make me wonder, though- is overloading ourselves to the point that we can't even perform a routine task with scrambling it up a good thing? A person of around half the average intelligence of his or her peers is known as a "half-wit". And it isn't usually an endearing term spoken with respect and esteem. But maybe, its not such a bad thing after all since using half your brain for something is pretty good. And being called a "half-wit" is a lot better then being called a "quarter-wit". So, I think I will consider it a compliment the next time someone calls me "half-witted".