What happens when the routine is suddenly not the routine? Do you just go on with your life as if nothing happened, as if it t'weren't nothin'? Do you remain in good spirits? Happy? Positive? If you answered yes to any of these, let me help you back to your spaceship so that you can find your way back to planet Brylcreem where you came from. As for me, I find that I usually have a fit, mutter unintelligibly, throw things, stomp my feet, and, on occasion, I have been known to spit fire. Let me get into a few specific examples from my own life so that you can appreciate the type of situation to which I am alluding.1). You are getting into your car, an operation that you navigate successfully about a dozen times per day, when you bang the side of your head on the door for some unexplainable reason.
2). You are munching away on your gum, when inexplicably, your mind decides that you have a sudden taste for flesh and you chomp down hard into your cheek.
3). You are walking along a busy and quantifiably flat sidewalk in a very conspicuous part of town when you trip over an invisibility and find yourself looking up at the clouds.
How can operations such as these, ones that we have practiced time and again, suddenly go so wrong? This topic, which sociologists have considered studying for years, might even make for an exciting new series on the Discovery Channel.
