I move in a circle of date-book addicts.
Some of my colleagues believe that unless each coming event has been written on the calendar, it cannot possibly exist.
A friend of mine keeps a large desk calendar, an absurdly high-tech computerized diary and organizer, and even a pocket-size calendar in her purse.
Not writing things down wasn’t a problem for me for years. When I was a kid, there really wasn’t anything to remember.
I knew what baseball cards I owned and didn’t own.
I knew when games were being played on TV.
I knew when it was Saturday.
It was baseball, dinner, bed. Nothing really complicated.
Lately, however, I have begun to realize the inevitable consequences of my lack of confidence in lists. My life appears to be drifting toward chaos.
The chaos began when I tried to hook up the water hose.
Simple matter: All you must do is crawl under house a little ways and turn on the spigot. The hose is attached to the spigot. Water runs through the hose. The hose is about 40 feet long.
For the rest of the summer the hose will furnish enough H20 to water the flowers, wash the car, dampen the lawn, or scrub the front porch.
After I opened the water valve, I promptly left for work.
When I returned, I couldn’t’t help wondering where all the water was coming from that threatened to flood the community.
As I got nearer to my house, my car began to tread water. Busted pipe? I thought. No sign of storms.
Then it hit me. Had I checked the hose before I got in the car? Was it the hose that had been lying around all winter with some water likely still in it? Frozen?
Surely, it wasn’t?
It was.
There was a hole large enough to swallow a kitten.
—
I had meant to check the condition of the hose. I made a mental note of it.
Only I failed to write it down where I could find it.
Then one day when I needed water, I remembered the hose incident. So, I promptly set out to find replacement parts. By the time I got to the home supply center, I had forgotten the measurements and I didn’t remember exactly what parts I needed.
I went back to the house and disconnected the damaged piece of hose.
Then I drove back to the hardware center.
The store was closed. It was 5 p.m.
The next morning, I drove back to the facility. “Can you replace this hose connection?” I asked an attendant.
“Sure can’t,” he said politely.
“How come?” I asked mildly.
“We don’t carry that anymore,” he said.
“Oh,” I said, folding the hose around my neck and exiting through a side door.
—
Things became rapidly worse from there on.
I was supposed to call my sister in Pittsburgh and tell her when I would be up there to keep her dog and cat while she was away at a seminar in San Francisco. But I didn’t.
You see, I never wrote down the number. Naturally, it’s unlisted, so it was completely impossible for me to get a message to her that I was going to be late because of the busted water hose.
Now she isn’t speaking to me anymore. See, I forgot to write down when her plane was arriving. She got to the airport, and I wasn’t there. She waited, and I still wasn’t there.
She called and I was out with the guys.
I wanted to make it up to her, of course.
So, I went to the grocery store to get the ingredients for my famous spaghetti recipe. I didn’t bring a list, and when I got to the store, I completely forgot to buy the essentials.
When I served up the gourmet peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, she was not impressed.
—
Now, I am not an idiot. I understand the principle of learning from experience. I realize that not writing things down has caused me nothing but chaos and disaster. So, I bit the bullet and bought a date book yesterday.
Tomorrow I might even write something in it.
—
Top of the morning!