My brother and I were laughing yesterday about something our dad used to do. He would get so wrapped up in whatever project he was thinking about or a story he was telling that he would neglect to pay attention to certain things around him. He had a really bad habit of just assuming that if he wanted salad dressing, then the bottle in front of him must be salad dressing, or the tube on the bathroom counter must be toothpaste, and so on. This led to him regularly putting lemon juice on his pancakes, syrup in in coffee, creamer on his salad, salad dressing in his tea, and so on. Over the years he brushed his teeth 20 or 30 times with Neosporin, Preparation H, or some of my mom's makeup.
My favorite was one time he was going to make popcorn. Back in the days before microwaves, you heated oil in a big pot, dumped in the popcorn kernels, and then shook the pot for a few minutes until it all popped. The rest of the family was nearby in the den watching TV and we could hear him shaking and shaking that big soup pot full of popcorn kernels, but none of them were popping. After several minutes he called my mom to the kitchen. About that time a nasty burning chemical smell hit the den - smelled like a burning dishrag - and we heard my mom say, "Oh good grief, James! That's PineSol!" There'd been a bottle next to the stove, so in his mind, it must have been Wesson Oil.