Play On!

I think I’ve got “age-activated attention deficit disorder,” but I’m not sure.

Right now it’s Saturday morning:

I decide to put things in order in our garage today.

I get the garage-opener from the drawer in the front hall table. I start to go out the front door and notice some mail lying on the table.

OK, I’m going to straighten up the garage. But first, I’ll just go through the mail. I sit down at the desk in the library.

I lay the garage-opener down on the desk.

I see bills among lots of junk mail.

While discarding junk mail I notice that the trash basket is full. OK, I’ll just leave the bills on my desk and take the trash can out. But no, since I’m going to be downtown near the post office in a while, first I’ll write the checks to pay bills …

Now, where is my checkbook?

Oops, there’s only one check left.

My extra checks are somewhere in the bottom of a desk drawer.

Uh-oh, there’s the can of Pepsi Lite I was carrying around. I’ve gotta find those checks.

But first I need to put the sweating can of Pepsi farther from where I’ll be writing. Even better, I’ll put it in the fridge to keep it cold for a while.

I head toward the kitchen and through the glass door, the potted plants on the porch catch my eye. They need watering.

I set the Pepsi on the kitchen counter.

There are my eyeglasses! I’ve been looking all over for them.

I’d better put them on the desk in the library first. I fill a container with water and head for the plants.

Oops! Someone left the big TV remote in the kitchen. We’ll never think to look in the kitchen tonight when we want to watch television, so I’d better put it back in the living room where it belongs.

I splash some water into the pots and mess up the porch floor, I throw the remote on a sofa cushion, and go back down the hall trying to figure out what it was I was going to do.

Saturday, now 5 p.m.:

The garage is not straightened up, the bills are unpaid, the Pepsi is sitting on the kitchen counter, the plants are half watered, the checkbook still has only one check in it, I can’t find the garage-opener and I lost my eyeglasses again!

When I try to figure out why nothing got done today, I’m nonplussed because I’m tired from being so busy.

But first, I think I’ll just catch up on my email …

It seems to me that life is built on opposites, e.g., day and night, rich and poor, fat and thin, Republicans and Democrats, dumb and smart, mean and amicable, happy and sad. By the time you finally figure this all out and find your proper place in the scheme of things, you’re not alive anymore, you’re the opposite.

Sage words:

“I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them.” — Thomas Jefferson

About Roney:

Harvard’42—Distinguished Prof, Em.—UCF

2004 Fla. Alliance for the Arts award

(Assisted by beautiful wife Joy Roney)