Historical February–March 2018 article. Dates, prices, services and contacts describe the source period; current availability has not been established.
Are you focused? How many topics have you been contemplating in the last three minutes?
When were you last in an emergency room?
These are not idle questions, dear reader. Pay attention because Hawkeye is offering morsels of high quality information, data and facts that will change your life.
I just finished reading an article, ‘When the Mind Wanders,” by Jake Pelini, in the October 2017 issue of The Atlantic, and it was quite enlightening.
He begins by noting that one in 16 Americans visited an ER last year due to daydreaming.
They went there because of ladder falls, accidents while cutting with a knife, and errors with cookware. Can you believe it? How can you be daydreaming while on a ladder or while using a knife? Sometimes I envision myself playing third base for the Cardinals.
There I am, glove in hand, slightly bent over, watching the pitcher and hoping that a ground ball will be hit to me. (Actually, chances are I am hoping it will be hit to someone else, but that’s another story.) Or now I’m batting, fouling off pitch after pitch, waiting for one I can hit with the bat’s sweet spot.
The crowd is on their feet, anticipating that I will once again come through in the clutch. It’s fun to think about all of the World Series in which I’ve played. No surprise, Pelini says that there’s a positive correlation between drinking and daydreaming. Yep, the more you drink, the more likely you are to daydream. Of course, and he did not make this point, if you drink enough, who can tell whether it’s a daydream or reality? Maybe, says Dr. Hawkeye, maybe drinking and daydreaming are both escapes? Do people daydream more while drinking wine or beer?
I wonder what it would be like to tour wine country in a chartreuse limousine.
I see myself in my prison cell.
The trial was rigged, you understand.
I couldn’t possibly be guilty of that charge.
But I’m not waiting for the scales of justice to tip in my favor.
As an “Enemy of the State,” there will be no favors coming my way.
But that’s OK because a compatriot has been sending me a cake each week – the prison food is terrible, no bacon to be found – with an emery board embedded inside. So, after the guards are asleep, which is often, I quietly file on the bars in my window. Right now, I’m trying to decide where to go after I slip out. There’s a serene pasture on the right and an amusement park on the left.
I wonder what rides are there.
The article states that daydreaming, also no surprise, plays a significant role in traffic accidents. Pelini says, “French researchers visited an ER to interview 955 patients involved in traffic accidents.
The majority of them have reported daydreaming just before the crash.” Is this an argument for driverless cars, or what? Indeed, when driving on a highway, I’ve often wondered what percentage of the other drivers were impaired because of something they had imbibed, smoked, mainlined, or snorted.
Now I will also wonder what percentage of them are distracted.
I wonder if they’re wondering that about me. Free-falling from an airplane has a certain appeal to me.
I bungee-jumped once in my youth – which was a long time ago – at a July 4 Fair on the riverfront, and as I was being put in the harness, the attendant asked me if I wanted to go feetfirst or head-first. “Head first,” I replied; go big or go home.
But free-falling takes it to another level.
I wonder what altitude is needed to escape the Earth’s gravity so that the free-fall could go up. And how high would you need to go to see the curvature of the Earth?
Another non-surprise from the article is that creativity is enhanced by daydreaming.
It only makes sense that creative people will daydream more. Or is it that daydreaming actually leads to creativity?
I wonder if Steve Jobs daydreamed a lot.
He sure doesn’t seem like the type.
I never knew Jobs but I am sure if we met he would have recognized my talents and given me a lofty job at Apple.
I can see myself there, wearing black t-shirts and helping to design the iPhone.
I remember Grandma Hazel as someone who was always on the phone. Realistically, that cannot be the case because she had a party-line (does anyone else recall these?), so some of the time she had to be waiting for her turn.
But that’s not how it seems to me. And I remember the great Easter cakes she would make with a mold that was in the shape of a lamb.
I wonder if those lamb molds are still available.
The article concludes by saying that “79 percent of adults would rather admit to a humiliating experience than divulge their daydreams.” What about you, dear reader? Are you in that 79%, and, if so, what in the world are you daydreaming about? More important, is Hawkeye in your daydream?
Originally published in The Times of Skinker-DeBaliviere, February–March 2018.
Read this article in the original newspaper issue.
Original source: SD_Times2018_02.pdf, printed page(s) 8; PDF page(s) 8.
