DON'T FORGET
I found this grocery list in my shopping cart at Checkers. I find these pretty regularly. I have surely left my own for someone else to find, though mine tend to be one-sided and on the back of junkmail envelopes or on sketch paper, not on frugally torn two-sided scraps.
This one has a simple poignancy — maybe it has something to do with the word "cheap" in parentheses after "small white bread" — that got me thinking about the paper trails we all leave. Some of us write something nearly every day of our lives, whether it be an e-mail, a report for work or a comment on a student's paper. Some of us write hardly a thing — a grocery list, a signature on a Christmas card, answers to a crossword puzzle. It's funny how you can make a guess about what someone is like based on a few words: oleo squares, bleach, bacon, cottage cheese. And you can detail your guess even further by the handwriting. And you could be completely right. Or you could be completely wrong. There'd be a particular satisfaction in either (I was right! or A stereotype has been defied!). But you never get to know.
We write to remember: to get a loaf of bread, to record an appointment, to set down an event, to say I was here and this is what happened. All writing is a reminder, a shopping list with more or less detail between the parentheses.
posted by kc @ 9:09 PM
13 comments
13 Comments:
Wow. That is beautiful. You know, I didn't think batteries at first ... I thought AA meetings. Like a connection with the other words on the page. You're right -- the connections come quickly.
All those notebooks I keep with schemes, lists, plans, I toss and shred. They're far too personal. A person's to-do list is a mirror to the soul.
So if you found a list or memo around the house, what does it say?
My mom's super-neat bedroom has a beautiful blue armchair I bought right after college but never took along on a move, and one of my dolls sits in it. Then there's a child's wooden desk -- my sister's -- with some of her collection of pig figurines.
There aren't writings from my mom herself, but the most treasured items she's saved speak volumes. Her dresser is topped with glass, and underneath it are little articles she has saved for posterity. One is akin to the "we'll always be friends ... you know me too much." Another, "if you keep doing things the same way you'll get the same results." Another is an Ann Landers response to a mother who can't stop badgering her overweight adult daughter. It's all pretty telling in another respect.
Yes, AA. And what are the caterpillar, chicken and train? And isn't it sort of odd that the amounts go 2, 4, 6?
One thing I make lists of are words in whatever book I'm reading — usually words I recognize and like but that aren't part of my regular vocabulary. Here's what's on a Borders receipt in the book I just finished, "Jane Austen: A Life": antipathy, forbearance, palimpsest, erudition, risible, morose, platitudinous, jocular, petulant. And below that is a note to remind myself to read "Jane Austen," a 29-page biography described by the author in her acknowledgments as "a marvelous little book" written in 1951 by Sylvia Townsend Warner that everyone should read.
Also, I bought myself a moleskin notebook just because I love it. I don't have any particular use for such a notebook, so now I've started writing stray words in it, like propitiation and puissance.
The things your mom has under glass, wow. Have they just been there forever? Does she ever mention them?
When I get a good spare moment I'm going to transcribe a letter I found in my front flower bed the weekend after Christmas.
I love that! Writing down words you don't normally use. They're so exotic, too. Like you have a rare insect collection or something. The moleskin notebook sounds like the proper display case for these gems.
Did you write the letter found in the flower bed?
No, I didn't write it! Some gay guy in jail wrote it, and the recipient dropped it either accidentally or intentionally in my flower bed.
I'll have to rummage through my junk drawer for other misplaced missives/lists I've found and kept: One was a letter from a kid to another kid that I found walking home; another is an interesting list some college student dropped.
Looking forward to it.
I hardly ever write anything by hand anymore. I got my oil changed the other day and decided to try to get some work done while I waited, so I started making some notes about a project in a little notebook. It felt strange to write. I was surprised at how much more space handwritten words take up compared to typewritten.
The only thing I consistently write is grocery lists. I take great pleasure in writing grocery lists, especially when they feature delicious food items.
The AAs -- I bet the caterpillar, chicken and train are Christmas toys that require the specified number of AA batteries.
I'm kind of a freak about grocery lists. At least the really big lists, such as you would make for a holiday meal, or that "once every three months whether we need to or not" kind of grocery shopping. I list things in the order in which I'll come to them in the store. I type them in a Word document so I can move things around without having to rewrite the list or make it insanely messy.
Hi, I'm Sharon, and I have OCD.
You seriously write them in order, hon? I mean, type?
I can laugh at this OCD, right? Or is that not PC?
I've been known to write my grocery lists in order, if I have a particularly long list. I've never typed them up, though. That's a tad too much effort for me.
Yes, you can laugh at OCD. I'll just keep track of how many times you laugh. :)
I type faster than I write. Besides, I'm often doing my grocery list at work, and I'm sitting at a computer, so ...
You should have your own TV show, like the lesbian "Monk," only you wouldn't solve crimes. You'd solve grammar issues!
Erin, you may not type your lists, but your handwriting is eerily regular and neat — like typewriting!
Thanks for the job idea. Never know when i might need it.
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