I Need A Check List

After taking six weeks off it was time to go back to work today. Teaching mah Jongg is something I can do in my sleep, but apparently remembering to bring everything I need to teach is not.

I repacked my car yesterday with six Mah Jongg sets, my big teaching card, my easel, pointer and Mah Jongg cards. I had a giant beginners class in the morning and a wonderful class of returning friends for Beyond Beginner. Thankfully beginner was the first class. As I was getting everyone set up I realized I forgot my IPad, which I need to teach Beyond Beginner.

I looked at the list of students in the Beyond class and saw Margie was coming so I texted her and asked her to bring her iPad. Thanks goodness for great students.

I used to have the kind of memory that could recall things easily. If I thought about a recipe I could remember all the ingredients when I went to the store. No list needed. Then if I wrote a list, the act of writing it would then put things in my memory to the point where it did not matter if I brought the list, I knew it.

Apparently based on today, I think I not only need a list, I need to double check it. I have been teaching Beyond Beginner for three years now, you think I would remember I needed my iPad.

One disclaimer, when I was in my late twenties I noticed that if I was on the third floor of my house and went down to the basement to get something I often forgot what I went down for. I would look around to see what might interest me that could possibly be the reason for going down three flights of stairs. I would find something and bring it up, knowing full well that was not the item. As soon as I got back to the third floor, then I would remember.

I think that poor memory issue was actually my body’s way of creating an exercise program to run up and down the stairs. For some reason that issue does not happen to me now. Perhaps my body got tired of that trick and said, “We are going to remember and not make you run up and down.”

Maybe I am not half as busy now as I was then with a full time traveling sales job and a catering business at the same time.

As for now, I think I might want to make a check list, at least for the week back from vacation.