by Harold Bowes

the checklist

THE CHECKLIST: Visualize a checklist: black symbols on white paper, or words on a screen glowing like the door to heaven. Let’s call it “The Most Important Checklist in the World.” On this checklist, there are 40 questions, which have to be answered either “Yes” or “No.” If any question is answered “No” – yes, even one – you will be devastated financially, your reputation destroyed. Thirty-nine questions are objective, one subjective.

YOUR TASK: Select someone amenable who will complete the checklist and submit it to the authorities.

A MEMORY: I have a recurring memory. I’m 22, and my 20-year-old brother is helping me move into my apartment. Our adult lives stretch out before us. Deep in the woods, all the shadows bend toward home. I have graduated from college and I am moving to the city where my first full-time job is located. We are in the bathroom and he points to the shower curtain and says, “That goes inside the tub; leave it outside and you flood the bathroom.” Our parent’s home had a bathtub, no shower. My brother had moved out at age 18. His advice seemed counterintuitive to me though.

QUESTION: Would you push window curtains outside into the weather?

WHAT HAPPENED TODAY: The memory about the shower curtain recurs whenever I open the door to a new hotel room. At a hotel in Arizona this morning, half panels of glass instead of shower curtains, I remembered that the apartment in the city I moved to after graduating wasn’t the first one. There was an earlier apartment my brother, generously and uncritically, helped me move out of, where I had lived alone and unaware my senior year at college. Peeling an egg, the skin comes away with the shell.

DECISION: Who do I have complete the checklist? Maybe it’s my brother.

FRIENDLY ADVICE FROM A FOOL: Not long ago, I was stopped at a red light and a bicyclist rode over to the driver’s side window. He wore a white shirt that billowed in the wind, brown corduroy pants, and sandals over sky blue socks. The bicyclist gestured for me to roll down my window and thinking that he wanted to alert me that the brake light was out or tire pressure low, I lowered the window. The rider shouted over the roar of traffic: “You know you have a metal frame around you license plate advertising a car dealer that adds about a pound to the weight of your car.” He said that extra pound impaired my car’s fuel economy and that I should remove the frame. Then he gave me his card, which said his name was Zephyr. Maybe he’s the one to answer the subjective question.

Previous / Next

Harold Bowes’ recent collection Detached Palace Garden (Ravenna Press) is available from Powell's, the legendary bookstore. When Ravenna placed two copies of his book there, he would routinely check their status. One day he found a copy of the book left on a nearby table. Someone had been reading his book.