Weblog entry after reading "The Bass, the River, and Sheila Mant"

Questions: Describe a time you had divided interests. How did one interest win out over the other(s)? What factors came into play?
Also, how does the author foreshadow that the protagonist will be unsuccessful at wooing Sheila Mant?

There are many times that I had divided interest due to the lack of my ability to concentrate on one thing. The most common occasion is when I’m sitting in a math classroom. For some odd reason, my other interests in my head conflict with my “interest” in math. I guess it’s wrong to say that I have an interest in math. It’s more like I’m interested in getting good grades and doing well in school. However, my constant daydreaming doesn’t seem to cope with my “mathematical interests”. Whenever an important lecture is going on about what will come out in the next big exam, the same pattern in my head repeats like any other day in math class. It all starts off with my head putting all its attention to what the teachers saying, but after a few minutes, the interest moves to what the teacher is wearing, then to what I might want to wear tomorrow, moving on to what I want to buy when I go shopping next time. The distraction goes on, and stops when I realize that I wasn’t understanding what I was hearing from the teacher and that the math exam wasn’t going to be very easy for me.

Wetherell foreshadows that the protagonist will be unsuccessful at wooing Sheila Mant through various part of his story. When the author wrote “There was a summer in my life when the only creature that seemed lovelier to me than a largemouth bass was Sheila Mant., it indicates that the summer was only the past. There was only one time when Shelia Mant seemed lovely to him. Shelia Mant’s attitude towards the author proved that she would never be too interested with him. The author’s “best tucks and dives” did not attract her attention. She is described as “approachable, but barely, and it was only in those glorious moments”, telling the reader that it was already hard for the author to even approach her. It seemed as if the author worshipped Shelia Mant who was a Goddess that never cared about it.