DO YOU MULTI-TASK?

DO YOU MULTI-TASK?

When I worked as secretary, being able to find something in a file for my boss, talk to a customer on the phone, and flag down a person walking by to pass them a note that so-and-so called and wants you to return the call – all at the same time – was standard operating procedure. Although we didn't know it then, doing three or four things at once was called multitasking, and if a woman has ever raised kids she will instinctively know that it is done all the time out of necessity.

Men do not seem to be very proficient in multitasking. The writers of the new “chick-lit” genre of novels might be considered tough on this deficiency in men if they weren’t so darn funny in describing it. Allison Pearson’s book “I DON’T KNOW HOW SHE DOES IT” and Jeanne Ray’s book “EAT CAKE” have delightful examples in them. But my favorite is found in Janet Evanovich’s book, METRO GIRL, where her characters are having a discussion on men. Listen:

Rosa, Felicia and I sat on the crimson-and-yellow couch in Rich Vana’s living room and waited while Hooker went to get another motor oil T-shirt.

“So,” Felicia said to me. “Are you sleeping with him?”

“No!”

“That’s a good thing. He’s hot-looking, but he’s probably diseased. I read the magazines, and I watch the celebrity shows on television. These race car drivers have sex on the brain. They’re like barnyard animals.”

“It’s not just race car drivers,” Rosa said. “It’s men. All men have sex on the brain. That’s why they can’t multitask. Their whole brain is taken up with sex.”

Jerry would not think this was funny, but I sure did!