"Time to check your level of responsibility?"

This is a clipping out of the morning paper today. I like to occasionally gut something out of the middle that is everyday life oriented. It's fun.



These are some of the things I HAVEN'T done recently.


1.Returned "Search and Destroy" by Dean Hughes to the library.
2.Responded to e-mails from several good friends, including Linda in Ohio an Patty in Indiana. (I'm sorry you guys! I promise I'll write back!)
3. Made arrangements for a groom's dinner (can you believe it? ANOTHER son is getting married!) , even though the wedding is coming up pretty soon.
4. Paid a bill to my favorite florist, Every Blooming Thing, for flowers I sent in July.
5. Returned a phone call to Glenn at BYU. (Glenn! Dude! My husband wants me to tell you that he really did give e your message. It's not HIS fault that I haven't called back in the last two weeks.)
6. Washed my son's football uniform. (i've just been burning scented candles in his bedroom instead.)

These are some of the things that I HAVE done recently.

1. Found a parking ticket on my windshield because the meter was expired, to which I can only say, OF COURSE THE METER WAS EXPIRED. I never put change in the meter to begin with.
2. Forgot Emma's birthday even though she's pretty much the daughter I never had, which is apparently why God never sent me girls. He knew I'd just forget their birthdays and then they;d be all like "our mother is so lame."
3.Lost the family parrot. After 12 years of doing penguin-esque belly flops off the top of his cage, our African gray finally discovered that his wings work. Yea! That's the good news! The bad news is that he was outside on the deck when he figured things out. The other bad news is that I was the one who left him out there.

Anyway, as you can see, it's been an eventful few weeks in a nonproductive kind of way. In fact, I was sort of startled this morning when I made up these lists, because, actually, I think of myself as a highly responsible person. Hello. My girlfriend Gigi Ballif and I were members of the Color Guard in the sixth grade, which, AS EVERYBODY IN AMERICA KNOWS, they only let highly responsible kinds do. The last thing you wan ti n the Color Guard are a bunch of non-responsible six-graders who don't show up or forget their hats or wear their badges upside down or drop the flag on the ground all day long.

Looking at my lists, however, makes me wonder if it's time to do an update so that self-image matches the reality at hand. Is it possible I'm not responsible any more? Do I need to get a paper route to teach myself some responsibility again?

Is it possible I've turned into that guy who still wears double-knit slacks with a white belt because they looked good on him, and also on Joe Namath, in 1974, and he thinks they look good on him still? (ANSWER : No. I'm not a guy. And I don't have a pair of double-knit slacks.)

All of us occasionally out to do a self-awareness exercise. Do my actions say I am who I think I am? Am I REALLY (fill in the blank)?
It can't hurt, right?
(Unless, of course, you think you're a lost cause.)
(Which you are probably not.)
(Even if the teachers didn't choose YOU to be in the Color Guard in the sixth grade.)


-Ann Cannon