We’ve all heard about it and we’ve all done it. Some people are much better than other, of course, especially kids. Being a mother of two boys who enjoyed annoying each other from morning to night, I developed the skill some years ago. I could block them out completely when I really wanted to.

Today, I discovered I have another skill - selective reading. On the weekend I visited Melly’s site and left a comment to a post she made about jokes and her father. Today I returned to the thread and read the other comments made after I’d been there and found myself wondering what everyone was going on about.

Upon reading the original post again, I realised that I had stopped reading once I hit the joke, so not only did I not read the joke, I didn’t read the remainder of the post. Hence, the post I read was quite different to the post everyone else read.

Selective reading = laziness. Yes, I’m aware of that and I am the first to admit that I can be lazy. However, in this case, I wasn’t even aware that I’d done it which is a bit worrying. Now I’m left wondering how many other posts I haven’t read correctly, and how many other comments I’ve left that might sound rather spun out. Oh, it could be embarrassing to find out.

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