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The List -- Writer's Poke #197

It’s difficult to go through the day without some idea, memory, or song sneaking its way into your mind. Don’t you just love it, for example, when you get a song stuck in your head? It might not be a song that you like, but it’s hard to avoid hearing some songs to the point that they are indelibly recorded into what has become, over time, your skull full of mush.

So the other day I was at the local grocery store shopping for donuts and Wheaties, and basically minding my own business, when what started playing on store’s music station? Hall and Oates’s “Kiss on My List.” In this song the chorus repeats at least three times, and it’s the same one line over and over and over again: “(Because your kiss) is on my list.” In the course of listening to the song one time, then, you hear this mantra at least 20 times. Listen to the song once, and just try to forget the chorus the rest of the afternoon. You cannot do it.

But what is this list that Daryl Hall sings so passionately about? You don’t learn that until the song’s end. Then all is revealed in the last repetition: “(Because your kiss is on my list) of the best things in life.”

Brainstorm your own list of the best things in life. Then, pick two or three items from that list, and elaborate on why you selected them. What would your life be like without them?

“Any man who can drive safely while kissing a pretty girl is simply not giving the kiss the attention it deserves.” – Albert Einstein

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