flashes of brilliance

I get them sometimes. To my discredit I ignore them until it's one second to late.

Sometimes when I am doing something I think to myself, "Stop. Stop it right now or this --fill in the blank-- is going to happen."

I, most always, stop one second too late.

Two small examples:

I was cleaning the hamster cage and smaking the bottom of the glass to get all the pine chips out. I thought, nearly out loud, "I need to stop-- my hand is going to go right through this..."

One second later my hand went through the bottom of the cage, I picked the pieces of glass out of my bloody palm, and continued towards my next flash of brilliance.

I taped up what was left of the bottom of the cage, put in a plastic trash bag, and started to fill it again with fresh pine.

I filled the cage and thought to myself, "I ought to carefully set this sixteen pound bag of pine chips back down or it'll dump pine all over the hallway.

I dropped the bag

and,

One second later

I was sweeping up sixteen pounds of spilled pine chips.

---

If only I was living TWO seconds in the future.

This would make conversations difficult, I know. I imagine it'd be like playing tennis with H. G. Wells.

But I could go on TV and wow audiences with my powerful abilities, be a couple-seconds-in-the-future-psychic, or maybe best of all, my flashes of brilliance would actually help me.

Or I could just listen in the first place.