Text cursor/Name edit when trying to open file

Hello all,

I've been having this odd problem on my 2017 MacBook Air running High Sierra 10.13.3 (but has also been happening on previous versions of High Sierra):

Every once in a while - there seems to be no rhyme/reason/pattern to this - when I'm trying to single- or double-click a file in the browser, it won't select or open the file, but it will make the file name editable. Basically, I have to then double click (or Command-O) in a space of the file that doesn't have any text/file name. Hopefully that makes sense; I tried to explain it the best I could.

At first I thought this was because maybe I was accidentally holding down a shortcut key or something, but that doesn't seem to be the case. It's not with certain files - it just happens randomly, then if I go to open the file later, it will select/open normally.

So to sum up, if I single-click on a file in the file name space, this will be what happens:

It's not much more than a minor annoyance, but I'm really curious as to why this is happening or what I'm doing to cause it (or if it's just a weird bug). Thanks!