Tabs Down the Side.

Tonight I was sitting at Golden Roast, where I take my brain to study (or where my brain takes me, I don’t really boss my brain around much), I was reading for a quiz on Wednesday. I was skimming the pages, highlighter in hand and was pretty thankful for whatever fellow procrastinator thought to invent that genius concept of the embolden word. Here's to you, Mr. Textbook company Editor man, after I shelled out a cool $100 + bones for this tantalizing read about Research Methods in Social work, you fine people had the courtesy to embolden some important words. Poor, bored, ink-logged, highlighter logged, paper cut grad students certain appreciate that gesture. Just your way of throwing a bone back, if you will. (Lets be real, for how much it costs, the book should read itself to me, make flashcards of itself, take quizzes about itself, make me snack, and give me a nice long back scratch). BUT seriously, bold word are so helpful. Nice long definitions behind them, examples, perhaps even a glossary and index with lots of other important words you need to know. They stand out on the page as if to say,”HEY.Right here. You’ll see this again. Pay Attention.” Big, black letters on a white page, left to right, top to bottom. This is clear, wonderfully objective and helpful and saves me time. (Usually this would be an appropriate time to say something like, “hey, now, time is money folks” but that is in fact totally inappropriate because I’m getting paid exactly $0.00 for school. Time does not = money. Thanks for reminding me. I will get paid something sad when I get out, I’m sure, and I’ll be buying Kroger brand cereal for the rest of my days. Whatever, it builds character. Like acne and slow metabolisms. Right now, time basically equals sleep, which is almost as precious as money and almost as hard to come by.) I digress. I appreciate bold words and indexes and glossaries because they are means of efficiency and organization, which is also, coincidentally, the same flame that sparked my love affair with office supplies. Honestly, if I was in the unfortunate habit of saying that I “heart” things, or that I less than3’d them, now would be a good time to express my virtual character love for office supplies:

(see, there's a heart in the middle for reason).

Now these bold words today got me thinking, what if, in an alternate super-office supplied wonderland, we could micro-manage, file, highlight, bold, strike through and shred our actual lives. For example, in a sea of people in puke-orange in Neyland Stadium on a Saturday in the fall, you could look out and see specific people highlighted for specific reasons. In a crowd, at a show, in a store, your eyes would be skimming over your world and suddenly you would see ‘Aha, you’re bold or highlighted or underlined, there is a circle drawn around you, you’re scratched out or there’s a smiley face beside you. and you would know that they were important, it would save you time (which would also save you sleep or money, respectively). You paper clip people and things to you that you think you might want to keep for a while with no great commitment, or staple people you're pretty sure about, and super glue the ones you want to stay forever (but be sure, like REAL SURE, that you do, infact, want them there for forever. Super glue does not play). In office-supply fantasy land, There would be big huge binders and you could organize, categorize, and file people and places and memories. I’m talking a lonely planet guide with A-Z tabs down the side. Categories like: Beautiful things, that which is not so beautiful, Straight-up ugly, Hilarity, Stuff I like, Stuff I hate, Questions that have been answered (small tab), Questions that have not been answered (big one), Really great meals, Really great memories, Awkward phase (there’s another big one). And each tab would be complete with pictures you could would take with your mind, moments where you could just look at something and blink or close your eyes and whisper, click. and that moment would be captured, held and filed. I would have taken pictures of Borders, back in the glory days of the “Borders Mafia” where it was the best shittiest job we all had ever had. I would take all the bad moments to through the shredder and then shred the shreddings again, and then again, just for good measure, can’t ever be too careful, and recycle them like the good tree-hugger that I am. I would make these binders, oh there would be dividers, indexes, page tabs, systems, colors. YES! All of life’s “quizzes” that I continue to fail, I would figure out why that is because I could compare and cross-reference my tabs and notes. I would keep my binders in my bookshelf beside my desk next to the books because books are the closest thing I have found to road maps of life so far. All of this just in an effort to organize and understand myself and my world and last year and the years before that and yesterday and tomorrow. This effort would not only be wonderfully fun exercise with office supplies (never time wasted), it would also save me time and sleep (for sure) and money (somehow, probably). If you all ever figure out how to organize and explain your own world using anything provided by the fine people at Staples, holler at me. I’ll start stapling and paper-clipping away.

"I cannot explain myself, because I not myself, you see" Alice. Alice in Wonderland.