Too Much Thinking

Medical researchers have not yet identified it, but I'm sure I have a disease called Too Much Thinking Syndrome or TMTS. The symptoms are easy to identify: no matter what you're doing, you're thinking about something else. This explains why the clean dishes end up in the glove box of your car and you end up brushing your teeth with your husband's anti-fungal foot cream.

Now before attribute these symptoms to plain ol' memory loss, let me disagree wholeheartedly. Well, as wholeheartedly as someone can who is thinking about the Beatyberry shrub she needs to move from the west fence to the north fence before frost and whether she faxed in her estrogen patch prescription to the pharmacist or to her mother.

I can remember everything. It's just that there's too much everything to fit into one brain at the same time so it cycles through my gray matter. I can only think of the thing I need to be thinking of approximately every 7 days 13 hours 43 minutes and 12 seconds. Remember those old glass chambers they'd have on some game shows where the contestant would step in and they'd turn on a blast of air and the poor person inside would try to grab as much cash as she could. That's what my brain is like most of the time. I keep grabbing for stuff, but the chance of getting that big payoff is tiny.

The final blow in my TMTS came yesterday when I was packing to go to a speaking gig in Palm Springs. I had everything ready. The presentation itself (always good to do that beforehand), the outfits, the Ziploc bags for my liquid hygiene items. I had even purchased a magazine at my grocery store to avoid paying extra at the airport for it. But one very important piece of currency had escaped by grasp. I hadn't purchased the tickets. This is slightly a bigger deal than packing shoes that don't match (been there, wore those).

Therein lies the true devastating nature of the disease. TMTS is random -- it often affects the sufferer at such a minor level that she dismisses it as exhaustion or early-onset Alzheimer's. It's not until one of the large thoughts that should have been included in the mix 6 days and 12 hours ago in order to avoid a $2600 first class seat to a gig that only pays $2500 that she becomes aware of the gravity of her ailment.

When TMTS gets that severe, there really is only one cure. No Thinking Whatsoever or NTW. This can be accomplished by some through intense meditation, but I've found through experience that meditation causes my mind to seize up in fear and my inner thighs to seize up in pain. The best way for me to reach the nirvana of NTW is heavy drinking. And given the people at the bar tonight, I'd say we're experiencing at epidemic of TMTS. When will the medical community give us the attention we deserve? When will I have time to move that shrub? Are those my tickets in your pocket or are you happy to see me?

Bartender, I'll have another margarita.

Leigh Anne Jasheway-Bryant
http://www.accidentalcomic.com