How Don's brain works.. or doesn't

The following is a complete sidetrack only tangentially related to this blog...

Okay, so last week I got a question from a reader about the post where I described having to go to Canadian Tire four times in one day.

I tried to explain it as just a fact of renovations, and how the unexpected is really the expected when renovating -- especially plumbing -- but she wasn't having any of it. Truth be told, I wasn't even really buying the explanation myself, and I eventually realized I was completely full of shit.

You see, it has nothing to do with renovating one's house, or even fixing toilets, and everything to do with me. And to prove it, I offer the following anecdote. It's not really about renovations (at all), but it does go to show how my brain works, and why, just sometimes, it happens that I find it necessary to do something to make up for being an idiot - like making four trips to the same store in one day...

Last week, I finally decided it was time to do something about my worn-out shoelace. The lace on my left shoe hadn't quite broken yet, but it was getting close, and every time I laced up my shoes, I noticed it, made a mental note to replace it before it broke... and then promptly forgot about it until the next time I had to lace up my shoes.

So I was pretty pleased with myself when I remembered my stupid broken lace randomly in the middle of the afternoon, and decided to take a little break from staring at my monitor and amble down the street in the warm summer sunshine to get a pair of shoelaces. I even had cash in my wallet, and figured it would be about a ten minute round trip, tops.

When I got to the store, I realized that I couldn't remember what length my shoelaces were. No problem, I thought - I happened to be wearing the very shoes for which I wanted to purchase laces!

Rather than attempt to get the nearly broken lace out of my left shoe, I took the good lace out of my right shoe, and compared it to the ruler mounted on the wall for exactly that reason. Given that the laces I had were somewhat long, I dropped 12 inches off the end of the resulting length, and came up with a length of 45".

I grabbed two packets of laces, stuffed the old lace in my pocket, and took the new ones up to the counter. After paying for them, I sat down in one of the chairs in the store, and opened up one of the packets. You see, I had taken the lace out of my right shoe, and didn't want to walk all the way up to the office with no lace. At the same time, I didn't really want to put the old lace back in, only to have to swap it out again when I got back to work.

Fortunately, the new lace was exactly the right length, so I grabbed the rest of my stuff, and headed out to the street, figuring I'd replace the other lace, the broken one, when I got back. Right outside the shop was a garbage can, into which I tossed the old lace, my receipt, and the packaging for the first pair of laces. As I headed up the street toward the office, I stuck the other pair of laces into my pocket... where I found my old lace.

Yes, I had just thrown the other NEW lace into the garbage can, along with the receipt and the packaging. Given that I'd seen what people threw into the garbage cans downtown, there was no way I was going in to get it, so I trudged back to the office, cursing my stupidity.

When I got back to my desk, I took the broken lace out of my left shoe, and the brand new lace out of my right shoe and threw them both away.

"But Don," you say, perplexed. "Didn't you put the new lace in your right shoe right away because you didn't want to have to replace it again anyway? Why didn't you just put a new lace into your left shoe and toss the other new one?"

To which I reply because I said I bought two packets of laces. I didn't say I bought two packets of the same colour.