An elemental fact of life found under the pig

My high school geometry teacher, a Mrs. Woodward, kept a paperweight shaped like a pig on her desk.

Now this being in the days before Ethernet, the school administration employed squads of Freshmen to schlepp notes and lists and other assorted documents from the office to the teachers in the classrooms, and Mrs. Woodward, being one of those teachers who liked to roam around the room when she lectured, seemed always to be on the opposite side of the room when one of those hapless runners arrived at the door, paperwork in hand. And she, not being one who appreciated being interrupted whilst deep in contemplation of a triangle, would shout across the room:

Under the pig!

The look of helpless befuddlement on the Freshman's face and the confusion that ensued was, invariably, priceless. These where the high points of my days. (I am, as you may have noticed, easily amused.)

So when, eventually, I found myself with a desk of my own the first thing I put on it was a pig. Well, not literally a pig - it was an old glass insulator from a telephone pole in fact - but I thought of it as my pig and whenever I wanted to be sure I didn't forget something I would write it on a scrap of paper and put it under the pig.

Then came the day when I noticed the stack of notes under the pig had grown surprisingly large and it occurred to me that maybe I ought to review my reminders, just to be sure nothing vital was forgotten. It turned out, of course, that most all of the notes had expired - whatever urgent tasks they referred to had long since been done and I could just throw them away. Or they hadn't got done, but now it was too late. Only a few still had any meaning, but since I had made such good progress at reducing the stack by then, I simply put them back under the pig and got on with things.

I've been doing it ever since, although now I do it on a computer, of course. I have to-do lists and lists of to-do lists and databases of lists of to-do lists, reminders everywhere. The nice thing about doing it that way, on a computer, is that it's much easier to throw them away.

The fact is that when it's absolutely essential something be done it somehow gets done, or else it doesn't, and life goes on.

Which reminds me, I need a pig icon.

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