Adventures in Self-Awareness

I just had a little fight with my wife. On my walk this morning while I was thinking about my blog I accidentally stepped into a bucket of wet cement outside the library. Fortunately there was an older woman who observed me and was able to help me out before I fell down. She also suggested that I immediately rinse my shoes off before the cement hardened if I wanted to save my shoes. I probably wouldn't have thought of that but I like these shoes. I wear them every day.

I went into the library, returned two overdue books (which aggravates my wife to begin with since we are on a tight budget) and then went directly into the bathroom. I rinsed off my shoes completely. Surprisingly I made a little mess while doing this. There was water, drying cement, and dirt on the sink and a little got on the floor.

While I was doing this the janitor came into the bathroom. He looked at me. The water was running a little harder than it should have been creating more splash than probably was necessary. My shoes were off and I was cleaning them with a paper towel. There was a pile of dirty paper towels nearby. One had accidentally fell on the floor.

He said to me, "You really made a mess here." Don't you know this is a public place. You shouldn't be cleaning your shoes here."

I responded a little weakly trying to explain to him about the bucket of cement and the fact that I needed to clean my shoes quickly before the cement dried.

He said, "I think you should leave."

I asked if it would be OK if it took out a book or two.

He said, "Maybe you should come back another day."

I said, "OK" and left.

When I got home I told my wife this story and she got upset with me. She feels I continually embarass myself and should be a little more aware of what I am doing. She was in a little bit of bad mood anyway since she was in the middle of filling out some complicated insurance forms. She hates doing this type of stuff. She needed our 2008 taxes to include with the forms. I told her they were downstairs. She went downstairs, got them, and used the information from these taxes to complete the forms.

After a few minutes, I heard her yell "Fuck".

I said, "What's the matter?"

She said she just noticed that she had copied information on the form from our 2007 taxes, not our 2008 taxes. The 2008 taxes were right below the 2007 taxes. She had ruined the forms and now was faced with the task of finding new forms and filling them out from scratch. She immediately blamed me saying that I was disorganized.

"Who puts the 2007 taxes on top of the 2008." she said.

I replied, "You should have looked at the dates before you copied the information." You are just as unaware as I am except in a different way. I stepped in cement and was not paying attention. You copied information from the wrong forms because you were not paying attention. What's the difference?"

"There is a big difference", she said. "You are constantly doing shit like this. '

I started to write this blog to make the point that we all are unaware in our own way and that we see very easily the way others are unaware but not the way we are unaware ourselves. Now that I have completed it though I must admit that my real motivation was to take the pressure off myself and calm my wife down. I think I'm going to have to take her out to dinner.