MAKING A LIST . . .

         Okay; I admit it. This has nothing to do with Santa, or Christmas, or have you been a good or bad child.  But I did not want to insert a picture of my own list of 'to do's'. 

   Do you make lists ?  Perhaps here is a pertinent research topic . . . what percentage of persons make lists.  I am sure that folks other than card-carrying obsessive compulsives write reminders.
Even the smart phone  has an app for 'Memos'.

     All this came to mind just now as I was packing my brief case and consolidating items to take to my office tomorrow (Monday) morning.  And there it was . . . the yellow legal pad with already two-thirds of a page of 'forget-me-not's'.  Some are extra important . . . tomorrow is a grand-son's birthday.  Those kinds of things must not be overlooked.  Other  items, while  important, are less 'right now', perhaps 'soon'.

     While it might be a temptation to claim that this is a  recently adopted practice . . . [a kind of hedge against elderly 'intellectual interludes', a term that a friend recently offered as an alternative to the pejorative,  "Senior Moment"] . . . I have kept lists since at least high school (Now well over a half century ago). For a time, I also had a 'socially acceptable' rationale for lists . . .  I was an 'absent minded  college professor'.  That cover is long gone, not having been in a college classroom to teach since 1982.  

    I derive great satisfaction in marking through a task completed.  And I have been pleased to hear other 'listers' acknowledge that sometimes after a task has been done that was inadvertently omitted from the original list that they add it for the pure delight of striking through.

    Try it; you might like it.
        The next item on my list now is  "Publish this non-sense and go to sleep".

      Satchel