A little girl needed a tube into her arm but she was too resistant to allow the nurse to do her job. The girl's father was an expert dentist, a specialist who dealt with shots and tubes and fear every day. He took her aside and asked if she was old enough to know the bad words that Mommy and Daddy sometimes used. Yes, she knew them. Good! The nurse needs to do her job so you can get well. This time, when she begins, "I want you to use all the bad words you know. Say them forcefully and go through them over and over until I tell you to stop." She did apply her knowledge of bad words and she was able to concentrate on saying them repeatedly and with relish, distracted from fear and discomfort.
One meets the word "distraction" often these days and it is usually in warnings against being distracted instead of attending to one's work or one's goal or one's homework. Those of us who use computers often find that various means are used to suddenly show us a picture of a very good-looking member of the opposite sex as a lure to buy a book, watch a movie or play a game. We are often warned against being distracted and urged to concentrate our attention on the goal, whatever it is or should be.
What is a distraction? What counts against good use of our attention? Sure, if you are assigned 25 long divisions and you vere off to play Minecraft, you have been distracted. Does it count if I cut myself badly and ask you to get me a Band-Aid? Will I approve when you say you are sorry but just now you are engaged in your homework and must concentrate?
Even our basic nervous systems are such that we are happy to drop the long divisions and RUN! when a saber-tooth tiger leaps out after us. What counts as an important job can suddenly be demoted in favor of an alternative action, as in triage. It is true that with a modern smartphone, with "notifications" (I just got an email from HER!), with surprise insertions of ads and tempting pictures of chips and beer, I can find myself off doing something else "Before I Know It" (Bargh, 2017)
