My Brain and My Daily Life

Every time I see a McDonald's employee, my eyes are glued to them.
To be more specific, I am fascinated by the person at the window.

My family goes to McDonald's quite often.
The kids want the Happy Meal toys, and for one reason or another, the fries are insanely delicious. Plus, they're cheap. Furthermore, they are served with surprising speed, which is a huge help because it allows me to quickly calm down my hungry little monsters.

When I ask my kids, "What do you want to eat?" they say "McDonald's!" about 90% of the time. The other 10% is usually udon. At the food court, they'll say things like "McDonald's fries and udon!!" and try to get everything, so I can't let my guard down with my wallet. And before I knew it, I had become quite a heavy user.
In our house, McDonald's is the fourth utility, right after electricity, gas, and water.

We sometimes eat inside, but our drive-thru rate is also high. After finishing our order, we slowly drive up to the payment booth. Then, the employee wearing a headset talks to us, saying "That will be 2,890 yen," while almost simultaneously taking the next order.

This, right here.
I could never do this.
This task of "simultaneous processing" is the one thing I cannot do.

It's impossible even if I stood on my head, and no matter how motivated I am, I don't think I could do it. I even wonder if those people are reincarnations of Prince Shotoku.
When it's a foreign employee, I'm genuinely floored that they can perform simultaneous processing in a second language... like, how?

I have always been terrible at talking on the phone.

Answering the phone itself is fine. But I constantly mishear things. And I can't remember them.

If I try to take notes, I can't hear what's being said. If I try to listen, my hand stops moving. A syndrome where I cannot move my ears and hands at the same time kicks in immediately.

Turning Mr. Kato into Mr. Sato is a piece of cake.
And while I'm at it, Mr. Nakayama flips over and becomes Mr. Yamanaka. What's more, it's troublesome because at that moment, I genuinely believe that's what they said.

I often make mistakes when answering the phone at work, so I get anxious, wondering if there's a rumor going around that "the person who answers the phone at that company is seriously messed up." Well, I've already been "certified as seriously messed up" within the company. And I'm terrified of being told, "Just leave a message." Even though I understand it the moment I hear it, by the time I go to relay it, the words have crumbled to pieces.

If a normal person can roll words around in their mouth like a hard candy to confirm them, in my case, it's like a boro cookie. It starts to crumble the moment I put it in.

Recently, I've been thinking about something.
Could it be that my brain is automatically filling in the parts I didn't hear? By the way, my ears hear perfectly fine, and I have no issues at all in my annual hearing tests.

It's probably the brain's way of being kind.
I feel like it's making a huge gamble every time with an attitude of "Could it be this?" It would be fine if the success rate were high, but the problem is that it's low.

The speed of this completion is also serious in a way; it's terrifyingly fast at finding things I haven't heard from the chest of drawers that is my mental vocabulary collection.
It makes things even more complicated because the content is often something I end up agreeing with, thinking, "Oh, that might be it."

Some time ago, when my child said they wanted to go to a special needs class, I was walking down the hallway with the teacher to visit the classroom.

The teacher said, "I think [Child's Name] would be a good fit for the emotional class." I replied, "That's right, she's the eldest daughter..."
The teacher had a "???" look on her face.
When I also had a "???" look, the teacher told me, looking very uncomfortable, "Oh... the classes are divided into intellectual and emotional categories."

First, let me make an excuse.
When heard in spoken language, "emotional" (jocho) sounds like "jo-cho." And in my daily life, I almost never hear the word "emotional" on its own.
My brain runs to that vocabulary chest! "Jo-cho, jo-cho... found it! It must be this! Eldest daughter (cho-jo)!!"
That was the moment the "isn't it probably this?" mechanism kicked in.

And then I thought, "Oh, so it was 'emotional' after all."
I also felt bad because I hadn't studied anything about the special needs classes, and it was even more embarrassing because the conversation had somehow made sense based on the flow of what was said before and after.

Brain.
Please, can't we just try to pick up only what we actually hear? I often think about whether I could have a proper one-on-one meeting with my brain. I want to sit knee-to-knee and discuss our respective arguments.

How about doing it while enjoying a delicious meal in a tatami room at a calm, traditional Japanese restaurant? Wouldn't we be able to talk more smoothly? I feel like I've heard that 80% of the outcome of a discussion is decided by the atmosphere and preparation.

Me: "No need for unnecessary preambles. Why did you bring something different?"

Brain: "Eh...? Because I thought this was probably it..."

Me: "No, 'probably' doesn't help me. If it's not certain, I end up having an accident every single time, don't I?"

Brain: "But... you seemed to be struggling... so I just hurried and brought it with about 80% confidence."

Me: "No, that's not it. 'About' doesn't help. And I'd like you to remember things properly, okay?"

Brain: "That's not fair!! It's not like I want to forget!! When I'm giving instructions to move my hands, somehow... it just ends up like that!!"

Me: "No, no, no, thanks to that, I'm having huge accidents over here."

...And so, this seems like it will be endless.
The discussion will likely remain at a stalemate.
The atmosphere was good, but it's undeniable that both sides seem underprepared.

And to conclude, it seems the brain itself doesn't fundamentally understand why this happens. Oh brain, you're suffering too, aren't you?

Yet, strangely enough, when I watch music programs, I can tell, 'Oh, that was off-beat.' Perhaps only at these times, my brain might be saying, 'Heh! Leave the music to me.'

Maybe that's why. When I'm making music, I feel like my brain is listening and adjusting happily. It feels lively, like a fish in water, thinking things like, 'What's this sense of discomfort here? Oh, is it this?' or 'This chord is the best!!'

I wonder what it is.
It's bad at sound as information, but loves chunks of sound. It feels like the range between what it likes and what it's bad at is too wide.

I see, perhaps the phone department is run by one person, while the music department has multiple people.
"This chord is better than the last one."
"Oh, the strings have moved to the background now!"
Maybe the music staff are running things like this.
Meanwhile, the phone staff seems like they would say, 'Due to chronic understaffing, we are currently operating with a single person. For phone calls, please keep it slow and clear, and we would appreciate your cooperation if we need to ask you to repeat yourself...'

There are times when I think it might have been easier if things were a bit more average. I often have trouble in real life, and I've been embarrassed quite a few times. But, perhaps this is just how I'm built.

It seems my brain's phone department is a department that is always full of newcomers because it can't hand over work properly due to chronic understaffing.
It's quite a black company situation.

That's why I prefer text over audio as a tool for getting information.
Words don't run away. I can check them as many times as I want. I think I'm often able to communicate more calmly using LINE or email than over the phone.

And I feel like I'm relatively strong with information that enters through my eyes. When I used to work as a proofreader checking for typos, it felt like the typos were jumping out at me. For some reason, I can find them strangely well. It might be close to the feeling of typos waiting for me, saying, 'I'm over here!'

Information that enters through my ears runs away like an F-1 car, while information that enters through my eyes feels like it's lined up like a car showroom.

One way or another, the world is well-made.
There are people like Prince Shotoku,
and there are people like a bolo cookie.

Just as there are people who help me, perhaps I am also useful to someone somewhere. For now, I've decided to think that way.

I tried daydreaming for a bit about being a drive-thru worker.
.........Yeah. It was pure hell.

I kept mixing up M and L sizes, and I'd think it was a McPork but it was actually a McChicken, so I was like, 'Oh no, the chicken and pork are getting mixed up!' It was a disaster. For one thing, I was completely distracted by the sound of the fries frying. I made so many mistakes that eventually the manager got a complaint and was really angry at me. As it turns out, no matter how hard I try, it seems impossible for me to multitask, even in a mental simulation.

That's why, whenever I see a drive-thru worker working so brilliantly at the window, I give them a round of applause in my heart.

"Bravo!!"
"Good job!!"
"Amazing!!!"

I keep secretly sending my highest praise to all of you reincarnations of Prince Shotoku.