My Calendar

My husband has made fun of me for years that I keep and often carry around a 7.5 x 9 inch week-at-a-glance calendar, which is slightly smaller than a loose-leaf piece of paper.  He says it’s ridiculous in this day and age to try to keep track of my life on paper when easy and reliable access is just a fingertip away.  Half of me agrees with him.

I do feel somewhat self-conscious when I’m at a doctor’s office, or at the hairdresser’s, and we’re trying to schedule my next appointment.  This is when I start leafing through my calendar, whereas the more technically savvy customer would search for the same date on her smart phone in just half the time.       

If I don’t have my calendar with me because it’s too cumbersome to carry around on that particular day, I go ahead and make the appointment, hoping that I am in fact free to go.  I ask for an appointment card that I place in my wallet but then have to remember to write the information on my calendar.  This works about half the time, if I’m lucky.  Needless to say, I’ve missed appointments due to this inefficient process and I’ve also missed friends’ birthdays and anniversaries, especially when their special occasions are early in the year, before my annual tradition of transferring the information from the old calendar to the new one.  Most of my friends with January birthdays (and February too, it seems) end up with belated wishes.

Another argument in support of retiring the paper calendar is that I could lose it, which I was afraid I'd done a few times over the years.  I’ve never shared this concern with my husband when it’s happened because I knew he’d lecture me about the absence of a back-up plan with my antiquated method vs. the very impressive and high-tech plan he instituted for our computerized devices.

The other half of me is happy I haven’t relinquished my pen and paper in favor of the smart phone. I like opening the calendar and viewing the whole week at once, with all my notes in as big and fun a style as I want, although I am shocked at times just how horrendous my penmanship really is.  Regardless, my semi-illegibility still beats prolonged exposure to the same boring computer font, and it’s far less frustrating than spending excessive amounts of energy searching for my reading glasses or succumbing to squinting, which my eye doctor has strongly suggested I stop doing.     

My collection of calendars has also proved to be an entertaining and valuable reference of my entire adult life.  Have I mentioned that I save all these calendars?  I think I have about 35 of them. If you asked me, for example, When was the first date you had with your first husband? or…your second husband?  I’m pretty sure I’d find these answers. If one of my kids asked, When did I say my first word? or Who did I play with when I was 3? or When did I take my first step? I think it’s possible that I’d be able to respond with accuracy.  David said all this could go into my phone calendar as well, and then I could print out all the pages to save forever if I was so inclined, but the tiny-weenie spaces I’d have to navigate on the phone template don't exactly lend themselves to sentimentality.   

Sometimes I think about making the change to an electronic calendar while also using my paper calendar so that one day I might be able to make a seamless transition, but this thinking doesn’t progress to action.  If my specific calendar were to be discontinued (Yes, I’ve used the same one since the beginning), that would most likely be a real game changer for me.  I think at that point, I might force myself to go electronic rather than try to cozy up to a new paper configuration; regardless, I can’t see using 2 at once, which would open the door for information to slip through the cracks, more than it does already.  No, I’d have to go cold turkey.         

My husband said I sound like a dinosaur, but I'm fine with that, as long as he doesn’t think I look like one too.