Numbering and Bullet Points

When I first met Troy, he had only been off the high school debate team for a little over a year. I was somewhat astounded at how very good he was at organizing his thoughts. He was forever saying things like “First of all….Second of all….” You get the idea. Once I got to know him better, I made fun of him for it. Then I realized, with no small degree of horror, that he had rubbed off on me and that I was doing it too.

He doesn’t do it as much anymore, but he does love him some formatting. I often have to edit posts two or three times because Troy has included blockquotes, numbered lists, indents and all manner of tomfoolery. I keep telling him that simple looks a lot better on the page. And he keeps right on tabbing and indenting. I cannot wait to see what he does with his part of this post. I have a feeling it’s going to be an html nightmare! All I can say is, he has to do all the necessary tweaking if it is.

When I thought up this topic, I clearly had a lot more to say about it, but now I am not sure I have any more pithy commentary to share with you. I am left wondering what I have already suppressed in my memory.

Finally, that is all. Elvis has left the building.

I was on the debate team in high school, so I learned at an early age to structure arguments in a certain fashion. In particular, numbering what you said won points with the judges and made you sound smart, even if you had nothing of relevance to contribute (which was rather frequent). I became so used to it that numbering things started creeping into my speech in everyday conversations. For example, at lunch period in high school you could hear me say something like:

“Number 1: you’re wrong.
Number 2: I AM cool.
Number 3: it’s YOU who are the nerd.
And Number 4: the Bible is numbered in the original manuscripts.
So there.”

(beat)

“Oh, and Number 5: are you gonna eat that?”

That usually silenced any critics as to the benefits of numbering sentences.

Heather used to tease me, commenting how I always numbered everyday conversations, but now I catch her doing it. Seems most days you can hear Heather “number one-ing” and “number two-ing” something to someone. Usually to me. For example:

“Number 1: we ARE going to have enough food for everyone.
Number 2: Need I remind you we have never run out of food for our dinner guests?
Number 3: Bacon does make everything extra special.
Number 4: Now just go walk the dog and remember to pick up her poop, please.”

In conclusion:
1. I’m embellishing on numbers 3 and 4 in the above example
but
2. numbers 1 and 2 are pretty accurate.