Do you notice anything different?

A Column by John Estridge

One of the worst questions someone I love dearly can ask me is: “Do you notice anything different?”

I read a bunch and have read a bunch since I learned to read “Run Spot run.” Learning phonics is all I needed, and I was off.

Some of the books I have read are about how the world’s secret agencies can turn a normal person into a super killer. They teach them to pay attention to their surroundings so they can tell if one electron is out of place in their abode – to tell them someone is there hiding or someone has been there to spy and/or set booby traps.

They teach them to look for everyday devices and items — like a post-it-note — one can turn into a deadly weapon.

There is a large amount of doubt they could teach me anything because in many ways of my life I am hopeless, but especially in this fashion. I do not pay attention. I do not notice things.

My dad would often ask me “What the (put curse word here) are you doing?”

One time when I tried truthfulness, it did not end well. We were in the garden, and I was holding tomato stakes for him to pound into the freshly turned earth. He used the backside of the axe’s useful side.

It was a beautiful spring day, and I had been watching the fluffy, white clouds pass overhead against the deep blue skies. And I was making shapes out of the clouds. I was having a really good time, especially considering I was standing there holding tomato stakes at the beginning row of a really big garden.

I should have told him I was concentrating on finding a deadly weapon within the dirt. After the ass whipping came ridicule, which never really stopped. Anytime he was angry with me, which was about 112 percent of the time, he would bring up the “making shapes out of clouds” afternoon.

Throughout my life, it is usually females because I think most males are like me or they just really don’t care what is different in a room, have asked that terrible question “Do you notice anything different?”

It might have been the causation for the bad ends to several relationships. It may yet be the causation to a bad end in this relationship.

If one would list all of my faults or all of the things I do wrong, one would need infinity to finish it. But this has always been a point of very deeply felt contention concerning the person asking the question.

When a female loved one tells me they are leaving for a hair appointment, I try not to do anything in the interim before they get home other than to sit and chant: “Tell them their hair looks nice when they get home.” Over and over I can do that and then when they get home, it is often like forgetting lines in a play when one has stage fright and all one can do is stand there with one’s mouth open feigning the ubiquitous “deer in the headlights look.” I know there is a correct answer. I know there is something different, but I am like Biden working without cue cards.

Just now I ran errands. It was my day off so getting dressed and venturing outside the house is really an accomplishment for me. This also gets on loved ones’ nerves.

Most, well almost everyone else I know, needs to be doing something to stay busy. They get bored doing nothing. I do not get bored. I love doing nothing. I read things. I play solitaire on the computer. I write. I watch sports. Sometimes, I just sit and remember things or think about things. I am a very boring person, but I really enjoy all of those things. I have a good time, but doing that, which is usually nothing, really gets on people’s nerves.

Thus, I knew I should get groceries and I should take out the trash. And I probably should have done much more than that. However, as I was putting away the groceries, I was asked: “Do you notice anything different.”

When I hear that question, I stop breathing. Hopelessly, I pan my eyes around the room I am in and it is like I am seeing it for the first time, which is very near the truth. Have we always had a white ceiling? Has that overhead light always been there? I’m pretty sure the cabinets were there when I left. Is there something new on the counters? Are they new counters? That is one of the four toasters we got for our wedding, correct? I don’t verbalize anything, but it is all flying through the vacuum inside my head.

And I know any answer I give will be wrong and ridiculed but answering with the truth: “I do not know,” brings back memories and usually a déjà vu reaction of the aftermath of the cloud-watching day.

To this day I have never been drawn and quartered, but I think I would like to try that over being in that situation where there is no right answer for me.

And today was no different.

Somewhere in that other realm, my dad was probably out in the garden laughing, maybe.