Help!!! It's attacking me!!! It's leaching onto my soul and pulling me down into the depths of despair with its deadly didactic dictatorship of doom!!! !
!!
True story. There was once a girl. She thought to herself, "I'm so glad Thanksgiving is coming up. It will be the perfect time to catch up on my list of stuff to do. I've been soooo behind, but I'm going to get all caught up and head into the rest of the semester feeling confident and relaxed."
And then IT happened.
(gasp) The List. (other gasp)
Said girl made a list. Now, this wasn't just any list. It was split into categories, beautifully organized and succinctly stated. It was the best, most comprehensive, list the girl had made all year. It was beautifully crafted, with bullet points, underlines, and italics. She named it Lester. I think that's where she went wrong, really. In naming the list, she somehow endowed it with an evil spirit.
The girl began crossing things off Lester. She emailed, shopped, banked, telephoned, and wrote. She cooked, called, fixed, and practiced. She sat for hours and hours in front of a computer screen, thinking, "It will end soon, I've crossed off so many things." Then, the first day ended.
She awoke the next morning knowing she had accomplished a great deal the day before. She decided to reward herself by reworking Lester, as she usually gained a vast amount of satisfaction being able to cross things off and see the list shrink. This is when she discovered the terrible truth. Lester had become the gerbil of all lists. Those twenty things she did yesterday had somehow multiplied into forty more things to do. She once again categorized and bullet- pointed. She thought that she must be miscalculating, so the girl began anew, trying to whittle Lester down to the size of a post-it note.
Post-it no.
As the girl worked, Lester began to stretch. Whenever the girl tried to cross something off the list, Lester arranged for the entire universe to point at her and laugh. At the end of the day, the girl once again fell asleep dreaming about little feathers tickling that one spot on your upper back that you just can't get to with either hand.
And this torture went on for days upon days and months upon months, until, at last, the girl gave up. Lester won. He was now the master.
Stupid list.
3 comments:
I take it you have a lot to do lately? Or maybe the story about Lester was fiction...
Sounds like you need a vacation! :)
Lester is all too real. But then I spent hours with a friend tonight at a great used book store, so I'm feeling more like a real person. Unfortunately, Lester lives on... dun dun dun.
Oh Lester, I don't think he will ever go away...
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