Published: June 26, 2009 10:48 pm      

Distractions can be blissful

EDMOND — Distractions redirect our attention from one thought/action to another, and that’s more or less good.

Ignorance might be bliss, but it could get you run over or blown away; burn your biscuits; ruin your clothes; leave your household unprotected and complicate your life in general — which is why we have beeps to distract us from the ignorance of our bliss and call us to action.

The oven timer’s beep sends us hurrying to the kitchen to remove biscuits from the oven, and the clothes dryer’s beep sees to it that our wash-and-wear items emerge from the dryer unwrinkled. A series of insistent beeps from our weather alert radios precedes the bulletin that scrolls across the top of our television screens. Our home protection systems beep assurance that they have been activated, and smoke alarms beep their need for new batteries.

Beeps are the good distracters, unlike the honk-honk from behind when we’ve lingered too long at a stop sign. That’s aggravating, but not the honk that warns us we’re about to endanger ourselves and others. The whirling red light of a patrol car or the blinking red lights on our dashboards might or might not be accompanied by a siren, but we had best not ignore either. Ignorance of a pending traffic ticket or an overheated radiator is not bliss, and we can’t in all honesty claim we weren’t warned.

We get to wallowing in the ignorance of our bliss and resent the comfort/safety distracters we’ve programmed into our lives, none of which include the elusive gnat that hovered about my computer monitor this morning. I did not program that distracter, and I would have ignored it if I could, but I couldn’t. I had slap-slap-slapped to the point of frustration before I trounced to the kitchen in search of ammunition, glanced out the back window on the way, and caught a glimpse of the bright orange cannas blooming along the fence.

Beautiful cannas: a welcome distraction from my ongoing gnat war. Surely we could learn to get along. PETA could probably have told us how to do that, but I’m happy to say that it’s now too late to build a lasting relationship with the particular gnat under discussion.

“Saved by the bell” being the exception, we generally don’t enjoy the interruptions that distract us from our bliss, which would naturally exclude the pugilist laid out on the mat listening for that saving bell.

Under normal circumstances, neither man nor beast wishes to be distracted from enjoying the ignorance of bliss. That’s why, when we place a call near the dinner hour or at bedtime, before resuming the conversation we initiated, we ask, “Did I call at a bad time?” You very likely did, but — barring an emergency — unless you’re a telemarketer, only the rudest of those we disturb would admit it.

Animals are different. Even if your cat’s been declawed, you would not dare distract him at his dinner hour, and the old adage advising to “let a sleeping dog lie” exemplifies Fido’s innate distaste for distraction from his sleeping doggy bliss. You had best leave them both alone.

Not that they’ll leave you alone under similar circumstances. Saber-the-cat delights in nibbling my chin if his clawless pat-pats don’t wake me. Sue-the-weenie-dog can’t leap as high as the bed, but the table is lower and I’m easily distracted. Whatever she finds there is hers.

Even so, ignorance of my livestock’s shortcomings is a bliss from which I refuse to be distracted.

MARJORIE ANDERSON is an Edmond resident.