June 11, 2012

To Do’s Reviewed

ARCHIVES, June 11 – A quarter century ago today I graduated from high school. David Letterman had started his Top 10 Lists just two years earlier, and high school kids across America—emulating college kids across America—aped his format in a thousand different lunchrooms. That spring, I made top ten To Do lists for me and my pals Bob, Eddie, and Jason. We were all heading off into adulthood, and it seemed important to prioritize our strengths and weaknesses.

Here’s mine:

So there’s been some progress. I’ve made great strides on #s 3 & 7. I’m still working on #2. # 4 is a tough one.

# 9 surprises me. I’d just purchased my first vehicle, a pea-green 1974 Chevy Impala the size of a mausoleum. It cost $500, which I’d earned washing dishes my senior year. Running or immobilized, it was a welcome sanctum. If we’re going by meters, it got a respectable 48 MPG (also, what did gas cost in 1987? A nickel? ). I’m not sure what there was to complain about.

Then there’s #8. I didn’t learn to correctly spell the word “lose” until I was in my mid-20′s. The phonetics make it an easy enough thing to get wrong. But this wrong word is still kind of correct, in that I did like to loose (as in, “to let loose, free from bonds or restraint”) my temper upon the world.

I have made considerable growth in this department. But every now and then, at the DMV or in traffic, I still think, I might just loose it.