Men are hopeless at multitasking:

The fact that men are hopeless at multitasking came to me literally with a thud and rather painfully at that recently. I had attended a meeting at one of the offices where I work and unbeknownst to me the venue had changed from one floor to another. The new meeting venue was just four short flights down, so I chose to take the stairs rather than the lifts.

So there I was walking down the stairs and decided in the interest of time to also send a text message on my phone, while clutching onto my tablet an important business tool to me. One careful step at a time I made steady progress down the first flight of stairs and then I rounded the corner to the next level of stairs still texting away when disaster struck!

Up until now I have no idea what happened, I am not sure if I missed a step or miscalculated the distance to the next step or what because one minute I was busy texting away and a Nano second later, I was on my butt and bumpity, bumpity, bumpiting down the stairs. Instinct kicked in and I reached out to get a hold of the bannister to stop my rapid decent and possible serious injury forgetting for an instant that I was holding onto my tablet, which naturally flew out of my hand and fell two levels down to the next landing where it fell flat on its back the impact thankfully absorbed by the protective case that I had bought along with the tablet.

By this time my rapid gravity aided descent had been halted by my grabbing onto the bannister but not before sliding down four, possibly five stairs thankfully not witnessed by anyone the sound of the tablet slapping down on the landing below the only noisy interlude to a fairly action packed but quiet and tense few seconds.

I gingerly stood up unsure if there was any physical injury on myself, but thank God all seemed fine as I was able to curl my fingers and flex my joints and appendages without any serious pain save for the soft tissue bruising in my nether regions and possibly a mild sprain in my wrist where I had grabbed onto the bannister that is expected in such a situation! I made my way slowly to the meeting having collected my still functional tablet on the landing below, now suitably mollified and chastised having escaped with what could have been a nasty injury, my text message now forgotten and phone in the pocket holding onto the bannister for dear life lest a similar fate or worse befalls me before I got to the meeting.

It was only several days later the lingering pain on my backside now a distant memory and the embarrassment of falling down the stairs almost forgotten, that I retold the incident to my rather bemused wife. Nowadays I avoid multitasking as much as possible particulary when doing something physical lest I find myself in similar and painful situations.

So truly if something so mundane and everyday and as simple as walking down a flight of stairs while texting on the phone can go so awry, what hope is there for us men in a world that will soon be dominated by our multitasking sisters!!