A List of Lists

Remember the Book of Lists? I have very specific recollections from my childhood relating to the book of lists. One of my Mom's best friends was a boisterously gay man, Darrell, who babysat me occasionally. (I mention that he was gay because, in mid-1970s Kansas City, homosexuality was not exactly sung from the rooftops. It took a while for my child-mind to grasp his status. Of course, the beauty of the child-mind is that it seemed inconsequential to me -- different, but inconsequential.) He lived alone in a sparse apartment. When I spent the evening there, he would entertain me with hilarious impressions and stories. Darrell also had a copy of the Book of Lists, and after laughing ourselves silly, I would relax in a chair and pore over the lists. I was, perhaps, six or seven years old at the time, but I already had a fascination with categorization, organization, and comprehensive accounts of facts.

That fascination never went away. My Filofax now functions as my personalized Book of Lists. Here is a list of the some of the lists in my Filofax:

• Window installers. We need new windows.

• A list of the courses my wife and I had at our extravagant anniversary dinner a few weeks ago. (It took place here. The dinner was so clearly the most amazing dining experience I've ever had that, the next morning, after the wine-and-food haze had subsided, I had to record every morsel we tried.

• Local sources for Filofax supplies.

• Ideas for this blog. (And this idea isn't even on it!)

• Restaurants I want to try, subdivided into "big deal" restaurants and regular old restaurants. There will soon be another subset, for "Restaurants to suggest for my wife's birthday," which is on January 9th.

• List of compact digital cameras that may be suitable replacements for my old one.

• A list of the names of all the people I have to buy Christmas presents for, with space to indicate what present has been purchased. There are 20 names on the list so far, and nothing purchased.

All of the above lists are in my "Notes" section. I, of course, have a separate set of To-Do lists. Perhaps someday I will regale you with them as well. In the meantime, please contemplate the above.

(And, it turns out, the Book of Lists is still around -- there's even a "New" Book of Lists, which is confusingly labeled as the "original." So you don't need to make your own lists, if you don't want to. They come pre-made.)