I had a good friend in Florida that made me laugh. She was a tough chick, ex military, but she had turned in her khakis for burp cloths and baby wipes. She was a super great mom, and managed to decorate her house with things she found in dumpsters. You might cringe that that visual, but her house was really cute and classy. I could make a house look like the inside of Goodwill, after shopping at PotteryBarn.

One of the things this friend and I really had in common was our ability to get distracted easily. We would be in the depths of a very serious conversation about food storage or the latest parenting techniques and would suddenly find ourselves talking about something completely different. One day, as we stood in front of my house talking, I suddenly turned and almost shouted “Woodpecker!” For once, the conversation stopped dead. We looked at each other and dissolved in laughter. There actually was a woodpecker, and a very large one.

Since then, I have continued to perfect the art of conversation jumping to where it is now. Sometimes I think I should teach classes on this particular subject, but then I realize it would have to start out as a class about something completely different.

On the way up to my writers retreat this week, I found myself in a heated conversation with another crazy writer. We were bouncing through topics like nobody’s business. At one point, I had to just breath and acknowledge our amazing skills by shouting “Look! A chicken!” This, of course, it the universal code for, “I can’t stick to one topic!” My writer friend totally got the reference and we continued, with an even greater respect for each other.

I’m pretty sure the white knuckles I noticed on the driver were due to the winding road, and not to the warp speed of our conversation, but I could be wrong….cause I said so.

Photo credit: http://www.pelotes.jea.com