Will I Ever Learn - Joan Shepherd

I’m playing a game on Lumosity that I cannot conquer. This morning, I was eating a bowl of cereal at the same time, taking bites between waiting for the computer to quit showing the little colored circle going round and round. I have probably played the game fifty times or more because I like the challenge even though I have only made 100% once. Only once! 

The purpose of this game is “attention”, which is my weakest area, according to Lumosity.  Called “Train of Thought”, one is supposed to get the various colored engines leaving from a central spot, to their specific matching colored area through a maze of railroad tracks. It looks simple. It is simple when it starts, the little engines puffing along slowly and then coming faster and faster. But I have only managed to get them all in the right spots once. Only once! I tried going a step higher in the game – more difficult with more engines – and did better than the supposedly easier one. But I am determined to get the easier one mastered before moving on. 

Meanwhile, the slow computer gives me time to take a spoonful of cereal with half a cut up pear and milk. Perhaps I’m distracted because of that one-half pear. It is so full of flavor, and I think it tastes like perfume. That doesn’t sound too good but when the pear is crushed with my teeth and tongue, I get a delightful taste that seems like perfume. It is so delicious, I sort the pieces out to relish their taste. Are the senses of taste and smell close together that I have them confused? 

I play a few games getting more frustrated and decide to go do some real chores. As I straighten up, putting things in their right places, I realize it is just like the game but I don’t have tracks to direct me to the correct areas. The computer sits there, becoming  worse than a slot machine in Reno. No! I have work to do! 

 My outside chores are incomplete because it is now too hot. Even so, I use my walker to go to the mail box on the corner, pick up one piece of mail, see my cat that left me for another home but allowed me to give her a pet, picked up the mail I dropped, back to the house and down the flagstone path where the walker gets stuck in the spaces between each stone, and finally reach the door. 

Now I deserve to try the game again. Just as think I’m going to make it, I miss one of the switches from straight to curving and a red engine goes into the green space. So annoyed, I let a couple more engines wander away from their designated spot. 

What is wrong with me that I can’t do this?  After all, I have a Master’s Degree. If I spent as much time learning Spanish as I do playing this game, I’d be fluent by now. I give up. Who cares that I have this flaw? Not me. Lumosity can mark me down in “attention” if they want. I have done well on some other games. But not this one!

Well…

Maybe I’ll try just one more time. It only takes a few minutes and then I’ll get back to work.