Little notebooks

I never go anywhere without a pen and notebook. I have notebooks everywhere. My favorite ones have nice leather covers. But any bound group of clean pages will do. I am always jotting things down. Random exchanges I over hear, odd thoughts that come to my mind, obscure musings, the insane comments I over hear, what I see that is  hard to believe . . .  all those things that come and go in my life that I think, "I could never forget that". However, I learned a while back that it doesn't matter how insane, inane, humorous, absurd, or unbelievable something is in the moment, if I don't write it down at the time, I most likely will never remember it. Or worse yet, I'll remember that "something" was memorable but I'll never be able to remember the details.

When I was a little girl, I was always collecting note pads, notebooks, tablets, etc. But they were so precious, I would never write in them. In my mind I needed to keep each precious sheet of paper in them until something important came up that needed to be recorded. At some point the light bulb came on - why wait for the world to go by, anticipating something? Since that point, I am never more than a few inches away from some form of pen and paper.

So now, I note, comment, ponder, record, to my heart's content. It only takes a few seconds to jot down the comment I heard - one older lady with her walker speaking to another with a cane about how 'randy' that Mr. Goldsmith is at the home. Or the seriously overweight customer reply to the cashier at the drug store about how healthy her metabolism was and that her mama always said is was good to look healthy, those stick fingers of young girls were surely in poor health. And there was the couple, who had maybe 10 teeth between them, dressed in dirty t-shirts, commenting that, "Ain't no body got no sense no mo." 

Oh, there are also the to-do lists, grocery lists, and reminders to call the drug store or not to forget an upcoming birthday. There are the rough diagrams scribbled down of directions to my next destination, as well as phone numbers, passwords I know I will never remember, and the name of that song I love but will do me no good unless I can recall the name. So someone picking up any one of my random notebooks will find a plethora of nonsense, totally non sequitur drawings, weird "words" made up of aimless combinations of numbers, letters, and characters, and my grocery list.

But all that aside, there is method in the madness, clarity in the chaos, memories in the minutia. I no longer fear "using up" a notebook. There are always more.