The Lost List

Henry isn’t your average guy. Unless your idea of an average guy includes making spreadsheets for everything he plans to do every day, from brushing his teeth in the morning to brushing them again at night, and everything else in between. With time-allotments.

He’s a retired accountant. However, his organizational skills still show up for work full-time. During his in-office career, he created his fair share of columns and rows. However, bathroom breaks and dog walks were never line items then—they are now. Things have changed since the days he clocked in at the tech company. He’d hoped to work at least a few more years before hanging up his abacus, but the universe had another idea in mind—the pandemic. It’s taken a grip on the world like a squeeze doll and bulged its eyes out. Henry's work went virtual—for a while. Then business shrunk and cutbacks grew. They were decent to him: they called it a severance package—they didn’t like the term ‘forced retirement.’ But it is a tech company, so they threw in an Apple Watch.

Now he lives a solitary life with his best bud, August. Auggie, for short—he’s a Golden Retriever so named for the month Henry adopted him from the pet shelter. Auggie’s deaf; he has been since the day they met. This works out well—Henry does all the talking needed for a balanced conversation. Not that Auggie has nothing of value ever to offer. It’s just, if he doesn’t ‘see’ the question, it wouldn’t be fair to fault him if he doesn’t speak up.

The holiday season has been jingling along for three months now. Henry’s grown a little numb to all the jolly days. Today feels like the day before and the day before that. Auggie’s eaten and had his walk. Henry sits at his computer and Auggie lies at his feet.

“Maybe I won’t doomscroll today,” he says out loud to himself. He does that a lot these days. “Good idea, Aug?” However, when he addresses his four-legged associate, technically it’s not ‘to himself.’

“Any ideas what to do instead?” Henry looks at his buddy, who looks back at him with those puppy-dog eyes he so expertly wields. Yes, in fact, he does: Auggie yawns, slurps out a noisy swallow, rolls over and faces the other direction.

“Huh?” Henry’s jaw drops, his eyes shoot to the top of his screen. “No way—how’d I lose track? You’re a genius, Auggie. When I get tired, and yawn, and finally roll over to go to sleep—tomorrow won’t be just tomorrow—it’ll be next year!”

Like a jockey on a racehorse, Henry leans over his keyboard—his heels fly back onto the base of his desk chair. The bell’s gonged, and he’s out of the gate. Flat on his side, Auggie lets out a puff of air. He’s content: Henry got the hint.

Two of Henry’s right-hand fingers zigzag across his trackpad while all of those from his left tap out a tune of modifiers and letter-key combinations—yeah, he’s a power user. Windows spring open and zip closed on his screen. Some stick around longer as he pries open select folders for a peek inside or plunges into folders within folders. The brass ring is out there somewhere. If anyone can find it, it’s Henry. A born multitasker, he maintains a banter with Auggie, albeit a bit fragmented. “Gotta find that sucker… make sure I’ve hit all of my goals. Then I’ll… like always… dupe it… clear it… rename it as next year’s… bada bing… bada… boom! Gotcha!” His eyes sparkle like he’s found the holy grail. He double-clicks a folder titled: ‘Resolutions.’

“Crazy how this year flew, huh Aug? Wait…” The name of the document at the top of the window is: ‘2021.’ “Weird. This is last year’s.” He clicks a tab at the top and switches the view-option. Documents re-sort by ‘date modified,’ but ‘2021’ still sits at the top of the pile. “I’m positive I created one.” He scrolls down and looks around, but no ‘2022’ file shows up. Henry’s not used to his docs not being where they belong. Admittedly, he has hundreds of thousands of them on his hard drive, but that’s no excuse. He’s always logical when he puts them away and they’re supposed to behave likewise and show up when he looks for them. Henry can’t remember a time he couldn’t find one when he needed it. He does a global search, but again comes up empty.

“Think I trashed it by mistake, Auggie? I’ve got an app for that.” He opens his trashed-file retrieval app and runs it through its paces. He takes a few healthy bites out of a nutrition bar as he studies the scan in progress. Each drive, again and again: a dead-end.

Auggie gets up, stretches and barks. “What’s up, bud?” Henry says. Auggie backs up a few steps; he stands over his leash. “Great idea. Check my backups. I’ll do it right now.” Auggie barks again. Henry smiles. “Ah… what could I have been thinking? I mean, right after we take a walk.”

…

As soon as they get home, Henry looks at his watch—it’s 5:53 PM. He leaps back into the saddle, his fingers a blur as they peck away at the keyboard. With three huge—and almost full—external hard drives to sift through, he’s got his work cut out for him. It’s hard to say what’s driving him more at this point: finding the AWOL file, or making sure he crosses off all of his resolutions before the witching hour. The truth is: they’ve melded into one. It takes a lot to dissuade Henry once he’s on the warpath, and with time literally running out, that drive is at a fever-pitch. Beads of sweat are lined up at attention on his forehead—they’re waiting for their dripping orders.

Creativity isn’t a word that applies to Henry. He named his drives Number One, Number Two, and yep: Number Three. As he watches the progress bar of his search software, he cheers it on like he’s in Vegas. “Come on One! You got it! Don’t let me down! You can do it, One!” One didn’t have it. It didn’t do it. He checks the time—it’s 6:48 PM.

His breathing is faster now. He doubles his zest for Drive Number Two. “Come on, baby! Let’s go, Number Two! You da drive!” Number Two isn’t the baby, though. He eyes the time—8:48 PM—he sighs.

“Third one’s the charm! You got this, Three! Come on, Three!” Henry doesn’t believe in luck, but crosses his fingers on both hands anyway as the progress bar fills bit-by-bit and tiptoes, left to right. But Three isn’t ‘the charm’ and it doesn’t ‘got this.’ Henry looks at his watch and deflates—it’s 10:55 PM. “Aargh!” His eyebrows smash into each other as he contemplates what to do next.

Auggie would love to help, but Henry hasn’t clipped his nails in a while. Plus, he’s terrible at the keyboard. He gets up, stretches and pads over to his water bowl. He’s also not the neatest of drinkers, so after Henry finishes reading the daily newspaper, he opens the headlines and positions it under Auggie’s bowl. It serves double-duty: it saves the floor from splashes; and in case Auggie’s interested, it gives him something to read while he wets his whistle.

“I’ve got blisters on my fingers!” Henry says. “Not really—I’ve just always wanted to say that, Aug. Ringo Starr said it when the Beatles were recording ‘Helter Skelter.’” He looks down at his feet to see if his best friend’s impressed, but hears slurping behind him. He looks around and sees Auggie’s head hovering above his water bowl—droplets drips from his muzzle onto the paper. “Auggie… you’re brilliant! Of course… I had to have printed it out!”

Henry races across the room—he yanks open a drawer to one of his old metal filing cabinets. He loves to scan everything and then shred it. But being such a sentimental packrat, he draws the line at snail-mails, menus, and holiday cards. They get filed away and find themselves in good company with backup printouts and typed letters from the stone age, aka before computers. He speed-reads the tabs and speed-thumbs through all his hanging folders. “Holy schmoley, Auggie, some of this stuff is older than I am.” He snags whole folders of old files and tosses them onto the floor. His eyes dart to his watch—11:17 PM—“no way!” He slams the drawer closed and jerks another one open. “I know you’re in here. Show yourself! Ow! You see what I’m saying, Auggie? This is exactly why digital is so much better. Can’t remember the last time I got a stupid paper cut.” He sucks the blood off of his finger and continues to forage.

“Where is it, Aug? All this time, I thought I was organized. I must’ve been hitting the eggnog when I filed it.” He finishes with one drawer after the next, and yet the ‘2022’ file is still a ghost. “You think maybe I didn’t print it?”

“Wait… hold the phone… yes! Voila!” Henry stares at the folder he found it in. “Auggie, it was in the folder I created when I was upset about being laid off: ‘Disillusion.’ I guess I was pretty sad. Whatever—I’m a numbskull.” He checks the time again: 11:57 PM. He flies back to his desk.

Under his task light, he sees it better. In bold letters at the top: ‘2022 Resolutions - You Better Do Them All, Henry!’ He smirks and shakes his head. “I am so annoying.” He scans the page. Ninety-two checkboxes, none checked. “Okay, I’ve done most of these.” He blows out a breath and grabs a pen. “Check, check, yep, did it, got it, easy one.” He goes down the list and ticks off box after box.

He steals another glance at his watch—11:59:22 PM—“yikes!” He circles the three remaining:

19) Smile more often to others

“Stupid! I’m home-based now!” He strikes a line through it.

55) Eat less expensive dinners at restaurants

“Obsolete! I don’t eat out anymore!” He crosses it out.

92) Join a gym

“Yeah, right!” He slashes a line across it.

Out of the corner of his eye, he dares a peek at the time: 11:59:42 PM. “We did it, Auggie! You were incredible! I couldn’t have done it without… oh, no—I’ve gotta do ’23!” He grabs the paper—crosses out the last ‘2’ in ‘2022’ and makes it a ‘3’, and crosses out everything after the hyphen. Now it reads: ‘2023 Resolutions.’ Then, as fast as he can write (which is slow since he types everything now), he scrawls out a 2023 resolution:

1) Never make another New Year’s Resolution list—ever again!

“This, I can do, Auggie!” He checks it off and smiles.

Henry exhales and sits back. A haptic buzz tickles his wrist—he looks at his watch: a fireworks animation kicks off on its face. He grins and tilts the display towards his buddy. “Happy New Year, Auggie!”