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Lists
A Measure of Adult Life?
Pause a moment and consider how many lists you make. Then pause and think how many you need: it may be more but it may be less.
It’s one of the under-appreciated aspects of a happy childhood that it can be relatively listless; or list-less, to be more exact.
I remember being encouraged as a child to make a list of things I wanted to take on holiday. This was strictly vetted and reduced considerably. At the same time, I would bring home lists from school. There would be a list of uniform requirements at the end of each year as you progressed, and occasional lists of things needed for specific events. The end-of-term theatrical productions could produce odd requests — how many homes could supply a top hat to fit a boy of seven? and now I wonder whether all those plates used as props ever found their way home?
Once I left home, however, lists became a recurrent fact of life. Not just shopping lists, but daily lists of things to do. Soon, these evolved into a list tree. There was the…
