While searching online for a recipe for carne guisada this morning, I came across one on a “mommy-loves-to-cook-and-write-about-the-challenges-of-motherhood” blog. I scrolled past paragraph after paragraph and photo after photo before I finally came to the recipe. It seemed a little too tame for me, but I decided to read the comments to see what others thought of it. I could make absolutely no sense of the following comment:
What about cutting fingernails? That one is death for me. We’re talking full-on pinning down with a dose of threats and/or pleading. This looks amazing. Definitely a dinner option for this week!
What is hell was this comment about? My first reaction was that it must have been posted by a bot that posts random nonsense (it happened to me on this blog before I installed spam-killer software). But then I noticed that last sentence: “Definitely a dinner option for this week!”
I scrolled back to the top of the page and began reading the narrative. The blogger wrote about the challenges of brushing her toddlers’ teeth. The response I had found so utterly bizarre began to make sense; the comment referred to cutting babies’ fingernails which apparently requires threats, cajoling, and physical restraint.
It occurs to me that most of my posts here ramble on about multiple topics (or focus like a laser beam on pure madness). Responses to my posts, if any, might be understandably confusing if they referred to an issue tangential to a point I might have been trying to make (yet on which I spent three quarters of the post as I wandered down the rabbit hole).
Communication can fracture into a thousand incoherent thoughts, if given enough opportunity, can’t it? Yes, it can, but have I mentioned how odd it is to be prompted to think about carne guisada thanks to a grey, foggy morning, only to notice the skies cleared during my search when, finally, I look out the window to see blue skies?
There’s a certain nobility in acknowledging one’s psychological faults until the sheer volume of such faults triggers an avalanche. See what I did there? No? Nor do I.
