The Pointlessness of To Do . . .
So I was on a plane coming back from St. Louis-which was delayed three hours-and I was sitting next to a rather typical St. Louisian-though she was twenty somthing, which is actually rather a-typical for a St. Louisian as most with any sense get out while they can. Mid flight, when I wasn’t sleeping or reading, I looked over and noticed this typical/slightly a-typical Midwest girl writing what I could only presume to be a to do list for her trip to New York City. #1 on her to do list said only “Nose Ring”. I figured she intended on getting a nose ring to upset the conventionality of her rather pedestrian life. Though, I considered, if someone need to write such a note on their to do list to remind themselves that they did, in fact, want to get a nose ring while they were visiting the big, bad city, they didn’t really want a nose ring to begin with (that seems like the sort of thing people would remember without prompting). And then I began to ruminate on the point of to do list at all and came to the conclusion that there really is no point. To illustrate this point I have decided to construct my own to do list in order to annotate my previous weekend-see already pointless
1) Sit by the phone and wait for my grandmother to die-I think I performed this quite well because I was expedient in picking up the phone at 8 a.m. on Saturday morning, processing that I was not in my own apartment but indeed had fallen asleep celebrating a night of camp films at BSJ’s, and then darting back into the city to book my plane reservation for the trip home
2) Go to the beach-again a task that I performed extraordinarily well, as I booked a flight for Sunday morning to not disrupt previous beach plans-and to actually get a cheap direct flight home instead of a laborious and expensive flight with a two hour layover in Minneapolis-and actually made the hour and half train ride out to Coney Island (as the Q was running local on Saturday) with out aborting mid trip
3) Stay home and do all my work that I will not be able to do over the weekend as I will be attending a funeral-this I did not perform quite as well as shortly after arriving home Klingrap informed me that there was a party at a swank SOHO loft-which, yes, was used in the filming of the movie Big-and that there would be lots of free alcohol.
4) Drink Conservatively so I will not miss my 9 a.m. flight to St. Louis-this was done with marginal success. By two hours into the party I was downing straight vodka shots without flinching. And though it was good vodka and it was chilled, I believe I probably should have suspected I was not on the right side of sober for if I was I would have never been able to down the Vodka shots in the first place. But I did leave promptly at midnight, though Klingraps suave friend attempted to convince me otherwise, went home and promptly vomited for another hour. Fearing I would never make my 9 a.m. flight, I set the alarm for 6 a.m. and respond to it’s annoying beep so immediately that I was actually an hour and half early for the flight.
5) Be supportive at a time of need-I think the Jewish tradition of celebrating the dead instead of mourning them is the right sort of attitude. Although I was hung over at the funeral, vomited once on the way to the grave, I was actually able to conjure few good stories about my grandmother whom had had a good hand in raising me. We sat around, told stories, watched old movies and talked with one another freely. My aunt decided she wanted to make a pilgrimage to New York, sans family, to visit me-this may or may not be a good idea.
1) Sit by the phone and wait for my grandmother to die-I think I performed this quite well because I was expedient in picking up the phone at 8 a.m. on Saturday morning, processing that I was not in my own apartment but indeed had fallen asleep celebrating a night of camp films at BSJ’s, and then darting back into the city to book my plane reservation for the trip home
2) Go to the beach-again a task that I performed extraordinarily well, as I booked a flight for Sunday morning to not disrupt previous beach plans-and to actually get a cheap direct flight home instead of a laborious and expensive flight with a two hour layover in Minneapolis-and actually made the hour and half train ride out to Coney Island (as the Q was running local on Saturday) with out aborting mid trip
3) Stay home and do all my work that I will not be able to do over the weekend as I will be attending a funeral-this I did not perform quite as well as shortly after arriving home Klingrap informed me that there was a party at a swank SOHO loft-which, yes, was used in the filming of the movie Big-and that there would be lots of free alcohol.
4) Drink Conservatively so I will not miss my 9 a.m. flight to St. Louis-this was done with marginal success. By two hours into the party I was downing straight vodka shots without flinching. And though it was good vodka and it was chilled, I believe I probably should have suspected I was not on the right side of sober for if I was I would have never been able to down the Vodka shots in the first place. But I did leave promptly at midnight, though Klingraps suave friend attempted to convince me otherwise, went home and promptly vomited for another hour. Fearing I would never make my 9 a.m. flight, I set the alarm for 6 a.m. and respond to it’s annoying beep so immediately that I was actually an hour and half early for the flight.
5) Be supportive at a time of need-I think the Jewish tradition of celebrating the dead instead of mourning them is the right sort of attitude. Although I was hung over at the funeral, vomited once on the way to the grave, I was actually able to conjure few good stories about my grandmother whom had had a good hand in raising me. We sat around, told stories, watched old movies and talked with one another freely. My aunt decided she wanted to make a pilgrimage to New York, sans family, to visit me-this may or may not be a good idea.