eyes wide shut

A few weeks ago I'm talking to a friend. 50 Shades of Grey has just been released and it is being promoted everywhere. My friend, an outdoorsy type who pays little attention to Hollywood gossip, says to me, "Hey, did you know that Dakota Johnson is Melanie Griffith and Don Johnson's daughter?" Did I know? Are you kidding? It's been all over the news for months. (Granted, not the nightly national news, but still). How does someone not know such an important fact?

M's mentally astute 85-year old aunt is telling M about her friend. "Poor Alice has had it rough. You know, her son has polio."  "Polio, really?" M asks. "Well, not the kind that was around when you were young and people were in iron lungs. I'm talking about the kind in your head." "The kind in your head?" M asks again.  It takes a while before she realizes that Alice's son is bi-polar, not stricken with polio.

Last night at book club one of the members isn't aware of the horrific news that the young co-pilot on Germanwings deliberately crashed a plane into the French Alps killing everyone aboard. But then, she hasn't heard that a plane even crashed on Tuesday.  In her defense, she's a professor at a top university, is taking classes full time to get another advanced degree, and is a single mom with two kids in college. 

This week I receive an evite from our EVP Sales Manager at Bellmarc.

Anna is our beautiful, model-thin, model-tall, model-faced office assistant. She's about to have a baby?  I write back asking if Anna is adopting. She's not. She's 7-months' pregnant. How could I not have noticed something as important and noticeable as this?

It makes me wonder what else I'm missing.