Sort of a short essay tonight, for two reasons. One, it is late. I just got back from a long evening supervising movers. Two, there is only so much to say about things; you continue yakking on and you become repetitive and boring.

MULTI-TASKING

Probably everyone who teaches has had this experience: a colleague comments to them, breathless with wonder and admiration, about how today’s youth are sooooo good at multi-tasking. They manage to switch from one tab to another to check their messages and statuses without missing a tab! I never say anything to this admiration; there isn’t anything to say. They expect you agree with them; if you don’t, just keep your mouth shut.

Why am I so disagreeable? (I’m not, really, I just don’t say anything substantive in answer.) I do find evidence of admirable multi-tasking out there, but it isn’t narcissistic youth checking to see who is watching them online, admiring the picture of their breakfast or their profound thoughts about their English teacher. You see, today’s youth did not invent multi-tasking, nor is what they are doing truly multi-tasking. As you might know without being aware of knowing it (or you might be like me, and fume every time someone goes on about multi-tasking youth), women have been multi-tasking since…well, since long before I was around, I can say that. And I’m ancient, having grown up with Fred Flintstone and ridden a dinosaur to school.

Watch a woman sometime, especially a mother. Anyone who watches a woman cook will see some real multi-tasking. There are a lot of things that require extensive multi-tasking to cook. A few come to mind, like lasagna and eggs benedict, but there are many others besides. You have to keep track of a lot of things happening all over the kitchen. Meanwhile, you are feeding the baby, sweeping up the mess the dog made on the floor, setting the table, changing a diaper (hopefully not while stirring the Hollandaise sauce), putting away groceries, answering phone calls…well, you get the gist.

            Somehow, when a group of teenagers manage to talk to several friends online at once, with multiple tabs open on their computer, this is praised as high-level multi-tasking (meanwhile, their teachers probably have twice as many tabs open, flipping back and forth between grading, creating a lesson plan, writing a test, or just complaining on social media about colleagues insisting they admire students who are multi-tasking). When a woman multi-tasks as part of her daily routine, doing it day after day for years, this is not noticed. All women do it, I believe. None I have ever known were incapable of it. In fact, the laziest woman I have ever known was a talented multi-tasker, long before anyone thought to make a polysyllabic word to describe it.

It is interesting, isn’t it, that something women do so much of is just plain not noticed? Just sayin’, that’s all.