Lists – Public and Private

My friend, fellow blogger and self-described crabby old fart Don Mills recently wrote:

Old people keep lists. It’s what we do.  Lists keep us organized, productive and help us to remember things when our memory starts to fade. They also keep us organized.  In addition to the standard “grocery list”, “to-do list” and “neighbors that may be communist sympathizers list” that you’d find in any decent American household, I maintain over 200 other active lists at any given time.

Don in his in his typically irreverent and crabby way went on to share some of them here.

I had no idea until Don’s post my propensity to keep lists was something “old people … do”.  I’ve kept lists since I was knee-high to a Coke bottle.  Nor am I (as I like to tell myself) anywhere close to qualifying as “old”, at least in the truest sense of that word.

I first wrote about my lists, “The Evidence of a Troubled Past” last September here.  Although mine won’t be nearly as gut wrenchingly funny as Don’s I thought I’d share more about my own lists with you my friends.

Lists – Evidence of a Troubled Past?

I’ve been a list-maker since I was a boy.  My first memory of list-making goes back to when I was probably seven or eight years old who knows exactly?  It was a list of daily chores I would do around the house on pages for each day of the week and attached to a small clipboard:  Monday: Take the garbage out. Tuesday: Dust. Wednesday: Clean the bathroom… those kinds of things.  Simple in their purpose but deep in meaning as to the reasons why.

Those lists of things to do were probably the first sign of my compulsion to write things down.  But why would one so young be so inclined?  It certainly wasn’t something “normal” for a boy to do, but I did it nevertheless.  And what of my propensity to be organized?  Did it all have something to do with a need to bring structure, some kind of order to an otherwise unstructured, disorderly life?  Was this my way to gain some control?