You’re on my List, Damn it!

Old people keep lists. It’s what we do.

Lists keep us organized, productive and help us to remember things when our memory starts to fade. They also keep us organized.

In addition to the standard “grocery list”, “to-do list” and “neighbors that may be communist sympathizers list” that you’d find in any decent American household, I maintain over 200 other active lists at any given time.

Here are a few samples:

List of Formal and Informal Grudges

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had a wonderful conversation with a dear old friend only to remember an hour and a half later that I hate their damned guts.

Sometimes it’s difficult to keep track of eight decades worth of historical slights, family transgressions and trivial personal vendettas. So, in order to keep my enemies straight and my grudges straighter – I make sure to write them all down.

Words I Need to Look Up List

I get a fair amount of moronic email from damned young people and most are full of words I’ve never heard of. So, in an effort to determine if these pups are being polite, disrespectful or just chowder-headed shortstacks* I like to look them all up. (Besides, I’m a wordophile or lingophile or whatever the damned term is for someone who enjoys words.)

Tonight I need to look up “pornocchio”, “doppelbangers” and the very offensive sounding “demi lovato.”

*See list of derogatory terms for young people

Signs of the Apocalypse List

I like to stay one trot ahead of the four horsemen so I keep a detailed list of signs that the world is about to come crashing to an end. Based on my current list of portents: “global economic crisis”, “wide scale artificial hip recalls” and “Piers Morgan five nights a week on CNN”, I’m confident we should be meeting our maker sometime before next Arbor Day.

List of Symptoms to Review with My Physician

At my age keeping track of all your aches, pains and suspicious moles can be a damned grind. But with this list, I simply jot down any unexplained bout of vertigo or unusual gland swelling and hand it to my family doctor for review and diagnosis at my next scheduled check-up.

(I’m anxious to see what he makes of my current list which includes: sunken eyes, enlarged spleen, swollen breasts, violent nose bleeds and rice-water stools. Based my research, I believe I may have either cholera, endometriosis or a dinopeptic germ.)

Don’s Bucket List

This has nothing to do with asinine dreams of climbing Everest, playing professional Jai Alai or trading smooches with Angela Lansbury – I’m referring to a list of actual buckets I would be interested in purchasing. At the moment, I have my eye on a rather dandy yellow Rubbermaid Mop Bucket with detachable wheels and a 3-gallon water capacity.

List of Relatives Currently out of Favor

(I’m actually scrapping this one for a list of relatives currently in favour. It should be significantly shorter and much easier to maintain.)

List of People I have Outlived

Nothing gives an old man more pleasure that outliving his closest friends and contemporaries. Sitting down with a glass of ovaltine, a red pen and the obituary page is one of the highlights of my day.

It’s also a form of validation. I may not have been as successful as Seymour Hodge or been able to beat him on the golf course – but on the back nine of life I have him by six strokes (and one massive coronary).

This is one part of my “death triology” which comprises the “list of people I have outlived,” the “list of people I intend to outlive” and the “list of teen pop stars whose careers I intend to outlive.”

List of Suspicious Licence Plates

I’m convinced that the house across the street is either an Al Qaeda terror cell, a grow op, an unlicensed day care centre or a combination of the three. In an effort to assist law enforcement I’ve placed binoculars by my front window and recorded the licence plates of over 600 vehicles that I don’t recognize and which have no damned business being on my street.

Derogatory Terms for Young People List

Just because I can’t call them “damned young people” all of the time.

Current terms include “chowder-headed shortstacks”, “slack-jawed nincompoops”, “gormless peckerheads”, “panty-waisted dimwits”, “braying jackasses”, “tweet-farting morons”, “drug-addled poindexters”, “pinheaded dullards”, “Fubsy layabouts”, “whinging sandbaggers”, “baggy-panted miscreants”, “incorrigible whippersnappers” and the always popular “feral assclowns.”

I rotate the last list fairly regularly, so if you have any recommendations, please feel free to pass them on.