If you've got the time... - Shawn's Sense with Shawn Loughlin

Just last week, I was speaking with Scott about the writing process and how, at least for me, it can almost be detrimental to have too much time to work on a project. As you return, return again and return a third time to graze on this sentence or that turn of phrase, it can get too nitpicky for life and sometimes you just have to call it a day.

 

As I sit here late in the day, unsure of what to write in my first column of a new year, I thought about challenging myself. A neighbour once asked me how long it takes me to write a column. I said it depends, but I could usually bang one out in an hour, if necessary. Well, let’s put that to the test. There was, I believe, a “Speed Chaff” once upon a time that challenge readers to read it as quickly as they could. What about speed writing? Clock starts now.

 

The topic I decided to tackle is the ability to tune things out. I have marvelled, since I first became a parent, at my ability to tune things out, when necessary. Now, I know what you’re thinking: what an awful father, and you’d be right. However, I’m more talking about the ability to tune things out that children like, but that melt the average adult brain. 

 

I was talking to my father-in-law about it the other night as my daughter asked to listen to music from Snow White in the truck on the way to her Christmas concert. He said he didn’t mind and Jess and I opined that he’s had lots of practice - first with his own two girls and now with grandchildren - to tune out music he doesn’t particularly want to listen to and just zone out, living his own life.

 

That was one of those times. Then the topic of “Baby Shark”, the popular children’s song and earworm to end all earworms, came up. He said that he can’t stand it and it’s impossible for him to tune that one out. I told him that there’s a reason it’s become the go-to song for people to play in areas where they don’t want people to loiter for one reason or another, whether it be a mall after hours or a bridge that kids like to gather under for drinks and grab-ass. I, mostly, have been able to tune out the many, many times I’ve had to listen to “Baby Shark” in the past few years. I don’t know what that says about me, but it says something. 

 

I have also been able to do this with a lot of stuff that the kids want to watch. There are episodes of, say, Peppa Pig or Cocomelon that I have seen plenty of times and they don’t bother me because I just phase out while the kids enjoy them. This is a skill that I honed, I think, during my daughter’s phase of being obsessed with figure skating. (That phase is ongoing, by the way, we know all the players, we know all the songs, all the routines and all of the scandals. We know it all.)

 

So, whether it was the Olympics from a few years ago or the local Canadian championships of recent months, we have watched the same skaters do the same routines and the commentary team make the same jokes over and over and over again. We even know most of the commercials off by heart. 

 

Having said all of this, I now get how a parent can just calmly stand in a store and go about their day as their child melts down - they’ve achieved next-level tune-out mode.

 

This ability, impressive as it is, has been handed down to my daughter, at least, though I’m sure my son will pick it up eventually as well. She is fantastic at tuning people out. Her parents usually bear the brunt of this skill, but I’m sure it has been applied to others as well. If she’s watching TV or something on an iPad that she’s really into, she might as well be on another planet. Not happy to pass that down.

 

Nine minutes, one second. Not bad at all.