COTTAGE GROVE SENTINEL January 14, 2015
11A
Hi, my name is Ned. And I am addicted to Post-Its
BY NED HICKSON
News Media Corporation
W
I
wallet as the attendant handed me a
yellow slip of paper. “By the way,
this fell off the back of your card.”
I took it from him and stared at
my handwritten reminder:
“Call about gas card.”
After handing the attendant my
cash, I reluctantly stepped from the
truck and, with no small amount of
humiliation, dug the Post-Its back
out of the trash, opened it and made
myself a note.
“Get more Post-Its.”
Ned is a syndicated columnist
with News Media Corporation.
His book, “Humor at the Speed of
Life,” is available online at Port
Hole Publications, Amazon Books
and Barnes & Noble. Write to him
at nedhickson@icloud.com
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“Breathe?”
“Swallow?”
“Don’t drink soda with Alka-
Seltzer?”
So, I decided enough was enough.
It was time to end the addiction. For
those of you who followed my at-
tempt to give up coffee, you prob-
ably know where this is going.
Still, I reached into my shirt
pocket, snatched my last, still-cello-
phaned package of pads and tossed
them out the window and into the
trash. This was my moment, some-
thing I would long remember with-
out a scrap of yellow paper conve-
niently laced with “stick-um.”
“Excuse me, sir,” the gas atten-
dant said, interrupting my moment
of triumph. “You got another gas
card? This one’s expired.”
Confused, I thumbed through my
Grab a BITE
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D
E
estaurant
hen my wife called to re-
mind me about letting the
dogs out at noon, I instinctively
retrieved a Post-It from the desk
drawer and scrawled “Dogs at
noon,” then stuck it to the computer
monitor. This required shuffl ing a
series of other yellow Post-Its into
order of importance, with things
like “Call about hair cut,” “Go to
dry cleaners” and “Clean out van”
written on them.
That one, of course, was moved
to the very end of the line.
Sadly, they’re all things I should
be able to remember on my own
and usually do; like when I’m star-
ing into the closet for a pair of pants
to wear.
Later, I climbed into van and was
gently reminded by a shocking-
yellow piece of paper to “get gas.”
It was while sitting at the pump a
short time later that the notion of
Post-It dependency hit me. In the
beginning, I was only an occasional
user, jotting down out-of-the-ordi-
nary reminders. You know, things
like a doctor’s appointment, or that
it was time to change the oil.
Then, “Change cat box” and
“Take out trash” began appearing
on the bathroom mirror, or stuck to
the alarm clock — painfully obvi-
ous things that were reminders in
and of themselves.
My life was becoming sort of a
dot-to-dot, or in this instance pad-
to-pad, existence, moving from one
reminder to the next. What was
next?
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