Off to work I go

Every morning before I head out the door on my way to work I have to sing a little song to make sure I remember all my required accoutrements. It goes like this: “Keys, Watch, Wallet, Work-ID, Cell Phone, Blue-tooth, Glasses and Briefcase”. There is no specific tune for the song other than a monotonous la-dee-da-dee-daw… the whole point being to mark the items off the checklist.

This habit came about as the result of many years of forgetfulness and even though I live only a few minutes away from work it still ruins the day when I forget. Every time I ever start to fall out of the habit of singing this little reminder I find myself at work without one of the listed items and soon enough I am singing that same old tune again.

I must have always had a bad memory because I have always had a checklist before I left the house. As a kid all I needed was my pocket knife. Later I got a wallet and that started the first simple list: “Knife and Wallet”. When I got a car I added keys to the list. Then my first day on the Railroad I had to add a hard hat and lunch box: “Keys, Wallet, Knife, Hardhat and Lunchbox.”

When I first started working on the Railroad life was simple but every time I got promoted I had to add more stuff to the list. After I got to be a machine operator I had to get special Railroad approved watch and there was punishment for not having the watch. When I became a Foreman I had to carry a Timebox, a big heavy metal suitcase for protecting important papers along with the two-way Radio for calling the dispatcher. So then the song went: “Keys, Watch, Wallet, Lunchbox, Pocket Knife, Timebox, Hardhat, Radio.”

As the years went by the number of keys kept going up, the wallet got thicker with IOU’s instead of cash and the pocket knife kept getting upgraded every year to the latest Swiss Army version so even though I wasn’t adding any more items to the list, the list of items was still getting bigger none the less. Then I switched over to the Hi-Tech career path and the list started changing again. Here was the longest list of all back in the ‘90’s. “Keys, Watch, Wallet, Glasses, Work-ID, Doorcard, Radio, Pager, Pocket Knife, Cell Phone, Blue Tooth, Brief Case, Lunchbox.”

Then things started to reduce when the Doorcard got integrated into the Work-ID, the Pager went obsolete, the pocket knife morphed into a Penknife, the Radio was replaced by a cell-phone, the Timebox turned into a Briefcase and the watch was no longer needed with a smartphone around. The number of keys on the ring is going down and the wallet is lighter than ever these days.

Someday in my future the list will evolve back into a simple few things; wake up, look down, zip-up. In the end there will be nothing left on the list and no way to know if I forgot something.