Advice from a small town girl

Every once in a while, a reader will ask me where I get my ideas for this column.

That question implies that I actually go looking for ideas.

What most of you don’t realize is that the inside of my head is like a pinball machine. And that most pinball machines were manufactured around 1970.

Shiny ideas bounce around, catching my attention for a moment or two. If I’m lucky, the flippers in my brain keep at least one of them in sight long enough for my memory to capture it. The more times an idea bounces off a bumper, setting off a flash of light and the ding of a bell, the more likely it is that it will end up here.

Nothing is more disappointing to me than to have a great idea and then see it slip by the flippers and down the hole at the bottom. Unlike in a pinball game, it’s highly probable that that particular “great idea” will never be seen again. For some reason, ideas don’t seem to want to line up in a tidy row, waiting to be released.

Frequently, an idea that seems particularly promising will end in disappointment, when it yields no more than a brief paragraph.

More often, it seems, I just can’t shut up.

Once I sit down at the computer and start tapping the keyboard one idea will morph into many. They’re like amoebae, dividing and dividing and dividing. I can’t type fast enough.

I can’t keep up!

Of course, I have to have captured the original idea before I sat down at the keyboard.

Because if I haven’t, I can guarantee that the pinball machine in my head will choose that moment to come unplugged. The lights go out. The bells go silent. And the ball release mechanism is empty. No matter how many times I pull back on the spring launcher, nothing happens.

It’s another story if I happen to be going 70 miles an hour on the freeway (possibly not the best time to have the lights and bells going off.)

Or if I’m on the riding mower. The last time I got distracted while mowing, I ran over a tree. Thankfully, it was a small one. Small but expensive.

Ideas tend to pop up at the most inopportune moments. I’ve been thinking that I should get one of those digital voice recorders for those times when I’m driving, doing the dishes or anything else that makes grabbing a pen and paper inconvenient, if not downright dangerous or disgusting. Of course, the other thing you need to understand about my brain is that the digital recorder will always be at home on the kitchen counter. Not in the car. Not in my purse.

See, it’s not just ideas that I can’t remember. I also can’t seem to remember my library books, my coffee or my lunch.

Good thing all the really important things are attached.