December 8, 2009
Tuesday

List your character flaws.
                   — Lisa Nola, b. 1970s
                         American listmaker

I rarely lack for a subject to write about. Like many writers, I write mostly about myself, even when my character is a middle-aged married male math teacher become suddenly desperate for contact with a woman he knew twenty years ago. Sometimes, however, it is beneficial to start a writing session with some kind of short stimulus, something different from the immediate project, like an athlete who does stretching exercises or a musician who warms up with scales or chord progressions. I have a large and varied collection of writers’ resources — writing prompts, exercises, guides for revision, for sharpening dialogue, shaping character, or shopping a finished manuscript around.

A book I picked up in Vermont last year appealed to me immediately. Listography: Your Life in Lists is the brainchild of Lisa Nola, a teacher in Brooklyn, New York, who sees lists as a tool to creating an autobiography. Even a “to-do” list, drawn up as a guide to get you through the next twelve hours, can be a memento of who you were and what you were doing on one day in your life.

Yesterday I spent some time setting up the templates for my Holidailies posts. I made a chart — a list, I guess — of the days I know I will address certain subjects. December 17 is my “Express a Regret” day, an antidote to December 23, Festivus, when I air a grievance. And December 24 is reserved for the posting of my essay on the meaning and importance of the 1953 Christmas Eve episode of Dragnet.

Listography was lying on the desk. Like many of the memory books and guided journals I’ve acquired over the years, it is unmarked. I’ve had it for more than a year, and although I’ve looked at it and even drawn up some of the lists in my private paper journal, I’ve never committed anything to the lightly-lined, decorated pages.

I opened the book at random. “List your character flaws” appears on page 39, opposite a drawing of a green Buick parked over a Handicapped symbol, with the caption “Inconsiderate of the needs of others.”

I picked up a pen and made my first entry, using two of the twenty lines provided. “I resent the ‘Maternity Parking’ spaces at the new Giant and use them when I think I need to.”

The Linglestown Road Giant is the supermarket I use most often. One of the first civic activities I took part in when I moved to this township was to attend a zoning hearing in the summer of 1976 and register my objection to the construction of a new strip mall on land that had once been part of a golf course. Citizen resistance was dismissed in favor of the economic advantages of the new businesses. I’ve been shopping at the Giant for more than thirty years now and can no longer remember what the tract looked like before Oakhurst Plaza was built.

And soon I might not remember what Oakhurst Plaza looks like. I rarely go to any of the other places in the strip, and the Giant has recently opened a snazzy new 98,000-square-foot store about a mile west on the same thoroughfare, so that will be my regular food-shopping destination.

The new store is very “upscale,” with classrooms and meeting rooms, a playroom and an eating area that looks like a lounge, with free WiFi. I was very happy to see that the new store got its “Panini” sign right AND that they have an ample supply of Diet Dr. Brown Cream Soda (the food of the gods). And I mentioned that on Facebook. I do try to give credit where credit is due.

The parking lot though — well, even my pastor dissed it in a sermon. He was talking about the things that we strive for or wish for in this life — “Don’t you try to get in the shortest line at the bank, or get one of the really good parking spaces at the new Giant?” There was silence. “Probably not, ” he continued, “since there are no really good parking spaces at the new Giant.”

The new store is 30,000 square feet larger than the old one, but the parking lot seems smaller. And it’s laid out in such a way that the space between the end of the parking aisles and the store entrance is much wider than it was. It’s also hard to navigate, with some dead ends and not enough stop signs.

It has, of course, the required number of parking spaces officially reserved for people with Handicap parking permits. But, unlike the old store, and every other store I shop at, it has at the end of each aisle four spaces marked with portable (that is, not permanently-placed) sandwich board signs showing a stork carrying a bundle and the words “Maternity Parking.”

I’ve grumped about this, silently. It seems petty and mean-spirited to feel resentful of accommodations made for women who are carrying an extra burden, especially if they also have to wrangle other small children in and out of the supermarket. And I count my blessings regularly, reminding myself that I have money to buy anything I want in that store and the energy of a strong heart and two good legs to carry me into it.

Well, usually two good legs. Readers of this space will remember that I injured my ankle on Friday. I’ve been having some hip and knee issues for a long time. Steps are particularly difficult, especially going down, and I tend to take them like a toddler, stopping with both feet on each one.

I left church early Sunday morning, something I never do, slipping out during the recessional and avoiding the meet and greet line at the door of the narthex because I was feeling especially tired and I wanted only to get home, get the hurt leg iced and elevated, and take some more Tylenol.

The Giant is about halfway between my church and my neighborhood. I can’t even tell you now what it was I thought I really needed at the Giant as I drove home. Evidently, lots and lots of other people really needed something on a sunny Sunday just past noon, because the parking lot was packed. I drove up and down several aisles, each time spying an empty spot ahead, only to discover when I got there that it was a stork space.

I started feeling sorry for myself. Where are the spaces for arthritic 60-somethings who have the added burden of a sprained ankle? I did okay when I was pregnant, and I was 38 years old! There was no such thing as “maternity parking” back then, or car seats that turned into baby carriers. Surely I need a close-in parking space more than some athletic 25-year-old who looks like she’s tucked a nerf ball into her jeans. Maybe I was there to buy some cheese for my whine.

On my third or fourth circling of the aisles that were closest to the doors (that is, in the primary space for the supermarket, not in the more remote spots that will serve the attached stores that are not even open yet), I took a deep breath and just parked in front of a stork. That designation is a choice the store makes. It doesn’t have the force of law like the Handicap spaces do (and should), so the only way to enforce the preference and to deter scofflaws is unfriendly persuasion — glares, hectoring remarks perhaps, name calling even.

Hey, I taught teenagers. There is nothing I haven’t heard, no taunt I haven’t walked past with my head up.

So I parked in the stork spot, made my shuffly way into the store, got what I needed (or maybe only wanted), and left.

I wish I were a better person about this, but I’m not.

And I don’t think it will be hard for me to fill the remaining eighteen lines of the character flaw page.

From the Archives
December 8. 2004 — A Hole in the Wall: I noticed it around lunch time — a tiny dark spot on the kitchen ceiling just above the section of the counter I lean over each morning to read the newspaper while the coffee brews. The area surrounding the dark spot looked a little, well, bowed. I decided to tell myself for the moment that it was a shadow caused by the very bright sun that floods the kitchen now that the backyard trees are all bare. But I knew. When I looked at it again a few hours later the spot looked a little darker. Still, I decided to think about it later. Like after my party. Eleven days from now.

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