I've Got a Teaching Disability

I just had an epiphany the other day at work. Somebody said "you know Joe, sometimes when someone asks you a simple question, when you answer you sound like you're trying to explain it to an idiot." And I said, "That's because I'm trying to explain it to myself as I go."

And I just kind of sat there, thinking wow. That's so true about me. But everybody else thought it was a joke!

It only happens in certain circumstances. When someone asks a question where I can see the question, and I can understand why it's a question, usually I can answer off the top of my head with a pat answer that springs forth with confidence in what I already know and the conclusions I've drawn.

But when somebody comes out with a question whose nature is such that I can't understand how it could be a question, well that tosses any possible pat answer out the window. It's like hitting the 'reset' button on my mind. It clears out my fundamental assumptions on the topic and brings me back to square 1, or as I prefer to call it, circle A. I scrap my former conclusions. I return to my foundational premises, and build the validity of the proposition back up from scratch, making sure as I go that it is indeed sound. Basically, I am explaining - not to the questioner, but to myself - why it is that way.

That's the only way I know how to do it! Once someone gives me to know that something I had considered well-concluded is actually open to question, how else to answer that? But I can complete the process pretty quick and easy, it's a snap to do - it's just that a side effect of listening to the process is that it sounds like me explaining something to an idiot.

Well, "oh well." My way of answering may not be conducive to anyone else's feeling of how they like their answers, but I have no sympathy for that - I'm not explaining it for their benefit. I'm the one stuck dealing with my mind.

My mind likes things explained very simply. And THEN - once it's got the foundation locked back in - then it goes spinning wheeling kaleidoscopic skyscraper towers of intricate indestructible colored glass, to pierce clouds and send rays of interrogatives to the waiting stars.