To-do or not to-do: that is the question
I maintain three separate household “to do” lists that help me keep my life in order. The first list, the major list, has all the important stuff that I’d like to do but probably won’t because I don’t have the time or money. Remodeling the kitchen would be on this list. Pulling everything out of the closet, painting the walls and putting back only what I really need, would also be on this list. The major list is no fun at all, so I don’t think about it very often.
The second to-do list is what I call the “little shit list.” It’s the only one of the three that actually gets written down. This is the stuff that needs to get done on a daily basis; stuff that I would otherwise forget and then regret later. Typical items on this list include: pick up child from grocery store, milk and bread from school. You can see why I need to write this shit down.
The third to-do list is more of a watch list. I call it the “ought to” list. There is a kind of a cosmic order to the ought to list. This is my favorite list. Let's say you have a slowly leaking pipe under the bathroom sink, but it only leaks some of the time. The pipe goes on the ought to list with the proclamation, "I really ought to fix that pipe." After a while, the pipe gets coated with a thick layer of rust and it stops leaking altogether. Problem solved. Another example of an item on the ought to list is that little widget you find on the carpet under the dash of your car. It looks important and it obviously serves some function – after all, it fell off the car! The widget thingy goes on the ought to list at the moment when you tell yourself, "hmm, I really ought to get under the dash with a flashlight and figure out where this thing goes." But you won't and after a while you'll realize that everything still works on the car and you can probably get by without the widget. Which is a good thing because by now you've lost it. Again, problem solved.
It's all a matter of dumb luck. This is what I love about the ought to list: given enough time, pretty much every item takes care of itself without me having to do a damn thing. Every so often, though, the temptation to intervene and solve a mystery on the ought to list is strong. This is almost always a mistake.
Several weeks ago, one of my cordless phones went missing. Not the whole phone, just the handset. The base unit was just where it always was, right beside my bed. I quickly noticed that the phone had gone missing but figured it would show up. When it was still missing after a week, I realized it was truly gone. At this point it went on the ought to list, as in “I ought to find that thing.” I made a mental note to look for the phone at some undesignated time in the future and then promptly took a nap.
After another week, the phone was still missing. That's when I took action. I decided to employ scientific reasoning to find the phone. I hatched a plan by which I would disconnect all the other phones in the house (there are many!) and then call the house on my wireless phone. Well, it sounded scientific to me at the time as I had few beers in me. I wandered around the house disconnecting phones. I was fairly confident that I got them all, so I made the call with my wireless. A phone rang out in the house. Ah hah! Alas, it was the base unit of the cordless phone in the kitchen. I had only disconnected the ringer in the handset, not the base unit. Who knew that they both rang?
I made a second call from my wireless. Silence. I walked around the house listening. I went into the basement. Cynde was watching television. My name scrolled across the bottom of the big screen TV. Our satellite receiver has caller ID and relays the information to the television screen – the ultimate in couch potato accessories. I think that feature is the coolest thing since sliced bread. But still no ringing from the missing handset.
The scientific experiment was a failure. Perhaps if I had drunk less beer; perhaps more beer. As I saw it, there were now only two possibilities for the missing phone: either it had gone out with the trash or it was still in the house with a dead battery. I was contemplating all this as I got ready for bed later that same evening. I was wandering around the bedroom with a toothbrush stuck in my mouth. Then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw the phone. "Damn," I mumbled and drooled toothpaste goo onto my t-shirt. "Damn," I mumbled again.
The phone is black. It was sitting on a black shelf of the black TV stand in the bedroom. It was there, just fifteen feet away from the base unit, the whole time. I just couldn’t see it. The battery was in fact dead.
So much for scientific reasoning. Serves me right for messing with items on the ought to list.
“The world spins because of dumb fucking luck. That’s all there is to it.” I’m pretty sure Albert Einstein said that. You could look it up.
Put it on your to-do list.
9:05:53 AM  Stories
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