From point A to C to X back to B — processing in logical order not my strong suit

I am not good at using logic to figure out situations.

I remember studying the U.S. Constitution in junior high school. The teacher asked us where they held the State of the Union address.

Heck, I didn’t know. I never had read it anywhere. I figured they took everybody to an auditorium somewhere in Washington, D.C., that would hold a whole lot of people. But the answer was the U.S. House of Representatives Chamber.

The teacher said “Think about it. There are only U.S. 100 senators but there are 435 U.S. Representatives so it is easier to fit the senators into the larger chamber.” I probably never would have gotten that. I know I missed it on the test.

I don’t seem to have the kind of brain that works in a logical order. Given a question, many people go from point A to B to C to an answer. My mind might not even start at A and it will wander among all sorts of letters and a few numbers before reaching a conclusion which often is incorrect.

One summer during college, I thought I would sell books door to door. The company had a sales meeting for us and an instructor gave us tips.

“When you see a no solicitors sign in a yard or on a house, it means a person with low sales resistance lives there. Don’t be afraid to knock on the door,” he said.

Personally I thought, “Maybe it’s just someone who is tired of people knocking on their door, making them get up from their TV or dinner table or from their couch where they are napping.” I know it would make me mad. But that was another indicator that I didn’t seem to think like most of the world.

It also was an indicator of how good I would be at that job. I lasted a week.

Another time a store manager was giving me instructions on selling clothing.

“What’s the first thing people look for when they are shopping for clothes,” the manager asked?

I said I would look for color, design or fashion that caught my eye. The correct answer was their size. That might explain why I often end up with clothes that don’t fit me. It also kind of summed up my career in retail management.

Another time I was sitting in a group of boys, listening to a coach talk about basketball.

“What’s the easiest shot,” he asked?

Again I was stumped. A 15-foot jumper? A free throw? The answer was a layup. If it had been legal at the time and any of us had been taller than 5-foot-9, the answer might have been a dunk.

But I was thinking layup in terms of running down the floor as fast as you can, dribbling a hard to control basketball while trying to avoid a defender and hitting your shot at a dead run — none of which I did that well.

Don’t give me a bunch of questions — tell me what you think I should know. I’ll have a better chance of remembering it that trying to guess it.

Once in a rare while I will get on the right track and figure out the answer, but usually I am roaming in the wilderness. I need a lot of clues.

So just to be on the safe side, to paraphrase an old saying, “Ask me no questions and I will tell you no wrong answers.”