I’ve never had a very good attention span. I don’t know why that is, maybe it’s ADD as a child or maybe its ADD as an adult, who knows. I was never diagnosed so I suspect that God gave me a short attention span so that I could quickly tune out the stuff that I find boring or lacks an emotional grab.
An emotional grab comes in many forms, like watching my favorite sports teams. I didn’t just wake up one day and say “I’m gonna be a yankee fan, or I’m gonna be a Royals Fan. Notice I didn’t capitalize the word yankee? I just can’t bring myself to do it. When Billy Martin questioned the amount of Pine tar George Brett had on his bat after George had just planted a home run somewhere in the 8th upper deck of old Yankee stadium thus causing the illiterate and spineless yankee umpire to disqualify the home run, that was it for me. Never a yankee fan, Babe Ruth or no Babe Ruth. That’s just one emotional grab that allows me to focus a split second longer on a baseball game, even a boring one, especially if the Royals or Cardinals are playing. This is sort of the adversarial emotional grab. If I see the yankees are playing, I might watch them for just a bit because I enjoy seeing them get beat.
An emotional grab for me can also be a great speaker or presenter, even if the subject matter is super boring, like the nominal yield on a 10-year bond with adjustments for inflation. I don’t even know if that’s a thing but it sounded boring, so there. If the speaker can present the value of a 10-year bond so that I am emotionally involved, you have a chance of keeping my butt in the seat for a while but if you stumble over your words and say UHHH a lot, I’m out, someone hand me one of those goofy looking airplane neck pillows because this boy is grabbing some shut eye. You see, if you get Tony Robbins to discuss the 10-year nominal yield bond market with adjustments for inflation, I bet I am paying a little closer attention. He just can’t ask me to walk across some hot coals in order to buy any of those bonds because my feet are very tender, not to mention my attention span is not very good.
An emotional grab can come in the form of something simple as eye contact or a facial expression too. With my ridiculously short attention span, I struggle with my “names” memory. “Hi, I’m Randy”, we shake hands and smile (hopefully) and you reply “I’m Lee Harvey Oswald, nice to meet you”. Now, unless I am in a dark room, handcuffed to a scuffed-up table under a beaming bright light and you’re introducing yourself as my lawyer, then you better do something to grab my attention or at least have a name like Lee Harvey Oswald or I am going to forget your name in a matter of seconds. I can’t help it so please don’t take it personal, I know it’s a flaw and I am seriously trying to work on it with every greeting. I combat this by trying very hard at leaving you with something to remember ME by because I am counting on you to help me establish some long-term memory between the two of us. I might say something like, “Randy Green, just like the color” or “Randy Green, just like grass, the kind you smoke or mow, either way works”. It’s cheesy and clunky but it seems to work. This is a long process for both of us and I hope to have you as a friend for a long time so bear with me.
This is not just my problem though, no sir, I am not the only one who can’t remember names or birthdays and stuff like that. An emotional grab is important for anyone with an attention span problem like mine and I am quite certain I am not alone in this regard. I’ve met people before and for some reason, they caught me with their own emotional grab and I miraculously remembered their name but unbelievably, they didn’t remember mine. Don’t worry, it’s just as ego deflating for me as it is for you. It usually goes something like this; “Hey Bob, great to see you again!” Bob furrows his brow, rubs his chin, cocks his head to one side, “I’m sorry, have we met?” Depending on the circumstances in which we met, my first instinct is to punch Bob in the throat for not remembering me but I am also very self-aware and remember all the times I have forgotten names and I immediately cut Bob some slack. “Yeah Bob, I pulled your nearly drowned body out of a flooded creek because someone told you the trout were spawning in the middle of torrential downpour.” Bob immediately places an emotional attachment to me now and we are back on track, so Bob excitedly replies with, “oh yeah! Nice to see you again Ralph, I appreciate you helping me out that day, wish we could have saved that Trout Stalker 750 with the reverberating release throttle, I just bought it at Bass Pro Shop, I paid 50 bucks for that.” I am forced to agree, “Yeah that looked like a nice rod and reel combination man, you should have seen the size of the trout that was dragging it away as I was doing your chest compressions.”
There is also the “unintended” emotional grab that helps me remember someone’s name like wearing a striped shirt with checkered pants or a piece of green leafy substance or lipstick stuck on your teeth or even perhaps an open fly, male or female. The unfortunate problem with the open fly problem, especially if it’s a female, is that it’s staying open. I am not saying a thing, nothing. I mean, this is a really precarious spot for a dude because how in the world do you admit you even glanced in that direction? Come to think of it now, if it’s a guy and the fly is open, Its staying open too. I’m sure not admitting I glanced in that direction either, I am forced to shake your hand and focus on your face because my eyes have already seen too much so you’ve already accidentally got my attention. I will remember your name for sure.
What’s the point of all this? I don’t really know, I can’t remember why I even got started with this one so it doesn’t really matter because the trout are spawning and me and old what’s his face are goin fishin.