I am not really an observant person usually. Things can be happening around me and sometimes I am oblivious to it. In my opinion, most people need to be taught to pay attention to their surroundings. If someone walked casually into a public place, say a restaurant, where you would be having a meal, and then they proceeded to walk out, would you be able to give an accurate description of their clothing or their hair, if it was a man was he sporting a mustache, perhaps a beard. Well, even though I am not very observant, as I mentioned before, I thought that, yes, I would be able to describe the person down to the facial hair and I would probably be about 80 percent correct. Well......much to my surprise, I was totally wrong when I was faced with a situation where I had to give a description of two people who were involved in a public altercation a while back. Two of my friends and I were returning to work from a lunch break one day and when we pulled into the parking lot of the office building, there in the middle of the parking lot were 2 people in what seemed a very heated argument. The young man physically shoved the young lady and she almost fell backwards! We quickly stopped the car and yelled at him to stop and they both ran off. We called the police and when they arrived they asked us for a description and we proceeded to give three totally different descriptions! We couldn't agree on her clothing or the young man's clothing or facial hair or anything!! The only thing we could agree on was that they were two young adults, male and female and that they were fighting. Unbelievable!!!
So, I was really surprised at how badly unobservant I was and still am. But I am working on it, when I remember. Sitting in the doctors office waiting room, or shopping at the grocery store, I try to see how much I can observe of the people around me. I make a mental note of everything about them I can see. I am training myself to be much more observant. It might come in handy, it might not, but it is fun to really observe people. I guess it's good mental exercise.
