Monday:
Let’s see what prompt is next
I really need to start writing this. But first ... gotta to check facebook ... play a move in 18 WWF games ... plan dinner.
Tuesday:
Maybe I should start thinking about what to write
Wednesday:
Time to find a title song (✔ thanks, Dolly Parton)
and featured image (✔ thanks, Salvador Dali)
Thursday:
Okay, I really need to start writing this. But first . . . gotta check facebook . . . play a move in all 18 Words With Friends games . . . figure out what to make for dinner (Thursday is my night to cook.)
Friday:
I’m writing the story now!
I’ve always been a procrastinator. In college I got an extension on every paper I wrote. I’m getting better with Retro stories — but not much.
RetroFlash / 100 words (excluding notes)
Notes
(i.e., things I thought of at the last minute, after I had perfected my RetroFlash):
1) When I was in high school, my mother typed all my papers for me. Sometimes she would be typing the beginning while I was still writing the end. When I was finished writing, if it was late (and it almost always was), she would tell me to go to sleep and she would finish typing it. Occasionally I think she stayed up all night to get it done. Does that mean she was an enabler of my procrastination habit? Can I blame it on her?
2) I conclude by sharing a poem I learned in childhood, and have never forgotten. Author unknown.
Procrastination is a crime
That often ends in sorrow
I can stop it any time
I think I will — tomorrow!
Suzy
LOVE the Dali image and the way you laid out this story, Suzy. You perfectly characterized your habit for us in a funny, yet truthful way.
Your notes section offers up a prime example and yes, I would say that your mother (with great fondness), enabled you. You were lucky to have such an able typist around. Not only did I always do my own typing, I typed Dan’s grad school papers too!
My mother also had an amazing skill (no longer necessary) of being able to figure out exactly where to stop the text on a page to have the right amount of room for the footnotes. Now the computer does it all, of course.
Great setup for the poem, Suzy. Wow, your mother typed your papers!? My mom never learned to type and wouldn’t have helped me anyway, but I typed some of her papers when she resumed college while I was at Mills. Maybe my do-it-now approach came from the knowledge I was flying without a net.
My mother had worked as a tri-lingual secretary between college and getting married, and was a very fast typist. She was my safety net in so many ways!
Wonderful and funny Suzy – and you of all people who must know the prompts well in advance!
And your mother telling you to go to bed while she finishes typing – not enabling, just being a mother!
Yes, I know and think about each prompt four weeks in advance, but by the time it is the next upcoming prompt I have already forgotten about it!
Some people are most productive under pressure. But you were lucky indeed to have help typing (and errors were much harder to correct before word processing). I find that inviting someone to dinner is a good deadline to make me clean up the house too.
I agree with that strategy for cleaning the house! That’s why we have to have people over periodically. (When you and Sally came over, we cleaned the house, and then you never came inside. Luckily we had cleaned up the back yard too.)
Very clever RetroFlash, Suzy. At least your approach is consistent. I love the little poem. Yes, there is always tomorrow.
Let’s talk a bit about your mother’s assistance with typing your school papers, including finishing the typing (Was proofing and editing included among her services? Did she ever offer a substantive critique?) while you slept. There was an uncut umbilical cord sustaining the two of you, it seems. This, along with other revelations like waiting with your mother at the stage door, as a team, makes me wish for an exposition on the whole of the (I will call it joyful) relationship. What did she think, for example, when you went off like an untethered hippy to hitchhike the Pacific Coast? How did you manage to type your college papers? Did you assist with the typing of your children’s papers, or do Broadway adventures with them? Did she prefer Julie Andrews to Audrey Hepburn, and if not, why not?
To answer your questions: yes; no; didn’t know about my hitchhiking; I typed my own college papers but wished she had been there (paid someone to type my thesis, but she didn’t do as good a job as my mother would have); yes to papers, no to Broadway adventures (hard to do from California); she loved them both, would have said no need to compare them.