forget-me-nots

I am an obsessive list-maker. I make lists about everything, including planning out every day in a given week down to the half-hour based on what I will be doing and listing the tasks I have to accomplish in each block of time. I've been doing this at least since college, making lists and notes all over any spare piece of paper (or a constantly open word document on my laptop), and I can tell you exactly why.

If I don't write it down, I will forget it. I forget everything. I really wish I didn't. I really wish I could tell you that I have this killer memory (and I do, for some things, like faces and names and album release dates and early 90s TV trivia), but when it comes to the basics of "don't forget your car keys" or "pick up some milk" or "must do X, Y and Z before I leave the house in the morning," I'm just no good.

All of this explains why my digital camera, instead of being with me at 221 Summit Ave., Jersey City, is instead in the Colonial Club House at Princeton University in Princeton, NJ. I was there on Saturday night after spending the night in glorious Alpha, NJ, with my friend (and former mayor of Alpha) Harry, a trip I had documented ever so dutifully on said camera so that I could report all of its happenings back to you. Here.

But since that camera was left sitting on a table (along with my gray cardigan sweater) at the Colonial Club on Saturday, I cannot do that. So instead I thought I would share with you a few other times my forgetfulness has caused me a bit of trouble, like the time I left my clarinet at home on the day of concert festival in middle school. On the day of my ill-fated try out for the Elmore Park Middle School cheerleading squad, I left my backpack in my homeroom class over night. With all my homework in it.

In elementary school, I went to the bowling alley with some friends and then to a slumber party, and never saw my purse again after that night. God only knows where I left that thing. One summer moving out of the dorms in college, I left my really beautiful digital scale in the bathroom, never to be seen again.

But probably the cake-topper on all those is the time I went to Louisville to speak at a high school media convention, just before the end of my junior year of college. Joe (my adviser) and I were there less than 24 hours -- drove to Louisville, got into our rooms, had dinner, went to bed, got up, did the conference, drove home. And in that time, I managed to leave literally every toiletry item I brought with me in that hotel bathroom. Brand new shaving cream, Mach 3 razor (don't judge me), brand new Herbal Essences shampoo and conditioner, body wash, etc. Every. Last. Bit of it. Left as a very over the top gift to the cleaning staff, of whom I apparently was extremely appreciative.

Blerg. Here's to forgetting, and to the stories from Alpha you'll get when my camera returns to me in two weeks.

cheers,
e. cawein