fidgeting

I have been known to watch tv while reading a book, chatting with people online, and catching up on Scrabble games on my iPad. This level of multi-tasking means that I am practically no longer capable of doing one thing at a time. Not that I ever could do one thing at a time.

This one time, in Kenya, I went to a conference where we all took a test about our learning styles: visual, kinesthetic, auditory. I scored approximately a seventy billion on the V and the K, and about a 4 on the auditory. (Although I have since realized that I probably could do better on the auditory if I ever needed to, but I never needed to, in school.)

The result of this, according to the presenters, is that in order to process information that comes in on the lowest scoring style (i.e., auditory, for me), we frequently have to go through one of the other styles. Which pretty much explains everything about my life: why I listen better when I play sudoku, why I wrote so much during college classes, why I fidget in concerts, why I roll napkins or fiddle with silverware or light my fingers on fire with the candle when I am sitting at a table in a restaurant.

It isn't that I'm not listening, it's that I am listening, and the fidgeting makes me remember.