Just home from Sunday School where I realised I'd made a major boo boo last week. I'd been supposed to teach lesson #27 on Salvation but somehow got things mixed up and taught lesson #26 which was also on salvation but slightly differently stressed on Man in need of salvation. When I told my colleagues about it, they said they hadn't noticed but I'm mortified. I've never done anything like this before and for such an important lesson. Argh, my brains are screwed!
A similar thing happened to a woman I was buying vegetables from yesterday. It had been raining heavily and everything was wet and slushy and humid. She's a nice woman and one of my favourite veggie sellers so I bought a half kilo of tomatoes and set down 25 bucks in front of her. Then I picked up something else for 10 bucks which I added to the pile. Then I picked up something else again for 5 bucks and finding I didn't have a fiver to give her, took out a 50 note and took back the 35 bucks I'd laid out.
That's when it hit her. She looked at me blankly and went, "Uhhhh." "It's supposed to be 40 in all so you can give me back 10 rupees," I told her. She went, "Uh, what all did you buy?" I said, "Tomatoes = 25, hmarcha = 10, bekang = 5." She said confusedly, "But you took back the 35." "Yes, so now I'm giving you 50 and you're supposed to give me back 10." She mumbled, "But I'll be losing out if you take away the 35..."
Yarghhhh. I was starting to feel hot under the collar. Nothing I said could blow away the cobwebs in her mind. Luckily, a couple I know well came along looking at her vegetables and broke the impasse. We both explained to the wife our little tango and she told the veg woman it was alright, I'd bought 40 bucks worth of goods and given her 50 so she now had to return me a tenner. Which she did and we parted ways. Finally.
I've often been in that kind of can't work out figures and logic for nuts in my mind mental confusion so she has my sympathies entirely. With me, it usually happens that when I've been away travelling somewhere and getting back to basics at home I get disoriented completely and totally. I can't remember the littlest detail, and figures throw me for a loop as intricate as a figure skating triple axel followed by a double salchow. It's probably because I'm just too physically tired and not rested well enough and my mind shuts down from too much information too suddenly. I'm guessing the woman yesterday too was probably suffering from lack of sufficient sleep and rest since veg dealers get up crazily early on market days.
Ah life.
