Two days ago I was sitting in on a presentation I had no desire to be in. I sat down at the conference table and braced myself for a mind numbing two hours of graphs and statistics. Sitting in a white room with no windows and being forced to listen to useless words is basically a recipe for disaster inside my head. See, what happens is I tend to focus on ridiculous things. Then these things take on a life of their own, and before you know it I have a litany of insane ideas and nonsensical observations practically leaping around inside my brain.
On this particular day, in this particularly dull presentation I focused all my attention on the woman presenting. Not on the information she was giving, but on the woman herself. Standing tall at 5 foot nothing, the woman had light brown, nice hair. I thought I would start this description off with a compliment, because I'm about to go into a veritable slew of boorish descriptions of this woman. As for the rest of her....she had on these really tight, dark, stretchy looking pants, which made her legs look incredibly skinny. However, on the top portion of her body she had on a really loose floral button down shirt which was made of incredibly thick material, possibly quilted, and it was left unbuttoned. Underneath she had on a light colored shirt, creating the effect the top portion of her body was incredibly huge compared to her tiny lower portion. Like she might topple over at any moment, a dreidel spinning and spinning yet magically never tumbling down.
However, as interesting as this "dreidel effect" was, the thing I absolutely could not take my eyes off of was her chin. Well, to be more precise....her chin wobble. In recent months I have found myself fascinated by this "chin wobble" as I have dubbed the fascinating phenomenon. This woman had a normal chin just like anyone. Well pronounced and quite commonplace in fact. Yet just below this commonplace chin is the wobble. To explain it simply, it is a large chunk of fat and skin that sits directly below the chin (often so large it obscures part of the neck, or in some extreme cases the chin itself) and jiggles or wobbles the entire time the affected person is talking. I couldn't tear my eyes off of this woman as she pointed to her graphs and charts. As she spoke it jiggled back and forth, up and down. It seemed to have a completely fluid shape and only settled down when the woman was absolutely still. Sometimes it even seemed to be in slow motion. It was utterly fascinating. Even when another presenter took over I found myself having to wrench my eyes away from the wobble.
After spending the better part of an hour jotting notes about the wobble, and just generally staring at this woman I finally came out of the wobble induced haze. I looked around the room, making sure no one was trying to surreptitiously read what I was writing.
I then got outside my own head a little bit (just a little bit, mind you) and realized what I was doing. I was so fixated on this woman's odd imperfection that I failed to hear one word she said. Maybe she had some incredibly useful information, something I truly could have benefited from having heard. Yet my asinine brain focused on her CHIN. Yes, her chin. I also suspect that everyone reading this was at least mildly amused thinking of the wobble. I was and still am amused despite the fact that I am ridiculing a woman I don't know for something that doesn't matter. In a way I devalued her by not even being able to listen to her. These things I realize, however I don't really think I'm sorry. Possibly this makes me cruel, or maybe it just makes me weird that I'm more fascinated by someone's chin than an informative presentation. Make your own conclusions about my reasons for being fascinated by this wobble effect.
These things I know :
1. A woman's chin caused me to examine my psyche a little deeper.
2. I'm quite amused by the chin wobble and will continue to be.
3. My chin will never, ever wobble like that.
To my readers with a chin wobble, if you don't like this blog or don't want someone staring at the wobble area, might I suggest having extremely interesting presentations?
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