How to tell if you’re losing the plot… (A Reminder!)

Not that I’d know or anything.

Everything is perfectly normal.

Putting two completely different shoes on in the morning happens to everyone from time to time. Noticing that they are two left shoes as you are about to leave the house must have been experienced by thousands of people around the world.

Spraying shaving gel under one’s arms, thinking it is deodorant, has been mentioned in classic novels, it’s that widespread an experience.

Trying to open the car door with the house key is so regular an occurrence it is hardly worth mentioning. As is trying to use the security pass card, that lets you into work, to open the boot. And using the house key to get into work, well, that old chestnut has been around since the invention of work.

Writing the wrong name on a form where your name should be; we’ve all done that. Nothing unusual there.

Forgetting completely and totally a work colleague (name, face, personality) who you have sat next to for five or so years… easily done.

Going into one room to urgently do something, but as soon as you are in the room the question ‘what have I come in here for?’ springs to mind. Very common an experience, perfectly normal.

Trying to answer the remote control when the phone rings, or turn over the TV channel with a glasses case, or even pressing a spy hole on a door to ring the doorbell – everyday things. Nothing to write home about.

No. None of the above, if you experience them, indicate you are losing the plot.

Moving the computer mouse and wondering why the curser is moving down the screen when it should be moving up, and suddenly realising that you are watching an artificial WordPress snowflake head towards the bottom of the screen is the key. Wondering why that particular artificial snowflake, rather than the twenty or so others, caught your attention so vividly that you blanked out the curser on the screen completely is another indicator. And writing a blog post about said artificial snowflake all add up to the fact that your plot is very lost indeed.

Or you are.

But you wouldn’t know, as everything is perfectly normal.

(Originally posted 18th December 2012)