Directionally Challenged

For me, simple is never simple.  An “easy” recipe turns into hours of nightmare and clean up, and there’s usually never much to show for it.  As I wrote earlier, the birthday cake, made especially for my two year old, was ruined in a massive way.  After careful review, I discovered that I left out the sugar and did not bake it for the appropriate amount of time.  The result was a doughy, bland, something or other.

I have an instruction- following problem.  My husband has suggested that I might benefit from some sort of a group therapy:  “Hello.  My name is Katie and I can’t follow directions.” 

This fact, however, has been my reality before a husband and children. And for each failed attempt through the years, there has been what I might have considered a good and descent explanation. 

As a child, I did not follow directions well in school. There wasn't a report card sent home that did not criticize my choice of social hour.   I tried to defend my behavior to my parents by explaining to them that God made me talkative.  I needed to be the person He wanted me to be.  That pretty much went nowhere.    

 I went through purgatory in a ninth grade classroom during my first year teaching.  There is no doubt that I was purposefully given the chattiest children in the entire school.  Each day I would publicly apologize to my teachers through the years while simultaneously giving my “if you talk again when I’m talking” speech, trying my hardest to put the same fear into them that the teachers tried to put in me.  I was about as successful that first year as my former teachers were with me. 

When I was ten, we visited my grandmother during a holiday vacation.  She instructed me to “trim the tree” on one particular day while she was gone shopping.  I heard that part of the directions, but missed the part when she told me where to find the ornaments.   I did just what I thought she asked. I followed my own version of her directions and turned her nicely framed artificial tree into something quite different using the shears I found in the garage.  I argued with my parents telling them that I heard MOST of the directions. 

During the end of my sophomore year of college, I stayed up all night cramming for an exam for which I was not prepared.  While shoving information into my brain minutes before the exam was passed out, I missed the all-too important announcement that anyone with an “A” was exempt from the exam.  I didn’t listen carefully and spent an unnecessary three hours on a written exam. 

When my professor asked me why I stayed, I just looked at him bewildered.  He then went on to tell me what I missed three hours before.  I told him I didn’t hear his instructions because I was trying to learn as much as possible.  He told me that I didn’t hear his instructions because I had procrastinated.  He was right. 

And then it wasn’t long ago that I purchased two bookshelves for my daughter’s room.  I wasn’t picky, so I chose the ones that seemed the easiest to put together.  Instead of taking the much needed time to follow the instructions, I threw them away and went with my constructional “gut.”    

What my husband would have put together in less than an hour, I completed in three hours.  And when presenting my accomplishment to the family, there was no hiding the large hole in the back of the first bookshelf and the chipped wood on the second.  These happened only after I put the first shelf together backward. 

The end result of this project was nothing short of ridiculous.   I tried to explain to my husband that the instructions were more difficult than they needed to be, and for that reason, I had decided I would be better off without them.  He said nothing.   All he had to do was point to the hole. 

A few days ago, I discovered a cultural phenomenon with directions that even a person like me can follow.  It’s called Red Box.  Stick your bucks in, walk away with some movies for a night, and stick them back in any Red Box the next day.

When it was time to return my DVD's, I went to a convenient location, walked up, pressed “return,” and let the machine suck in my first movie.  It was taken without a problem.  The second DVD was taken in the same way but almost immediately a warning came up on the screen:  “This box cannot read this DVD.  Please remove from below.” 

I blamed the machine for being insufficient and stuffed the second DVD back into the machine.  The same message came back up.  I literally began hitting the machine when I noticed something.  The machine was blue.  Red Box boxes were….red.  I backed up and saw the title, “Movie Cube,” strewn across the top. 

I declared Movie Cube unsatisfactory for stealing my first DVD.

Impatiently I got in the car and slammed the door.  Ella asked me what was wrong, so explained the whole situation and how ridiculous it was that Movie Cube would take my movie and not return it.  I was willing and ready to keep going on my rampage, but Ella interrupted me:  “Mom?  Aren’t YOU the one who put the wrong DVD in the wrong box?” 

And there you have it.  I was brought back to reality through my eight year old daughter.  No excuse here, folks.  Simple things are only simple… if you follow the directions.