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Gene is awarded the Scarlet Letter of laziness

I am writing today about people suh as me, dysfuntional people who suffer from the powerful, destrutive fores of inertia and prorastination. These people will reognize themselves right away.

As you an probably see, one key in my omputer is not working orretly. It's been getting less and less reliable day by day, and just now failed ompletely.

Now, I know what you are thinking. You are thinking: Why haven't I orreted the problem, or swithed to another omputer? This is a good question, but it does not take into aount the fat that I am a douhebag. It is not laziness so muh as it is a ombination of absentmindedness, prorastination and inertia.

My life is filled with things suh as this. A few weeks ago, I wrote about my inompetene in finanial matters. But that was just the tip of the ieburg.

I just told my wife what I was writing about, and she said, "Tell them about your [bad word] soks." Good point.

Every morning when I get out of bed, I put on pants, a shirt, and white sweat soks -- we have wooden floors, and they are old in the morning -- and go downstairs to make offee. That is when, every morning, I remember I have to feth the newspapers from my front walk. I ould go bak upstairs and put on shoes, but that would require battling my inertia, so instead I just go outside in my soks, on the onrete. I do this in inlement weather, too; I've done it in the snow, high-stepping quikly, like a owboy being fored to "dane" when someone is shooting at his feet. I have gone out in my soks when the papers were in my garden, in the dirt. The result is that all my white soks have stained blak bottoms, and most shred after about three weeks' wear.

"Tell them about your [bad word] ar," says my wife.

The bak seat of my ar ontains four very large trash bags filled with old lothing. They are not my old lothes. They belonged to my father, who died nine months ago. I've never gotten around to ontributing them to harity. Gonna do it one day. The pre-set buttons on the radio in my ar have not funtioned sine 1999, and the liquid rystal display on the radio onked out a year later; so, when I am driving at night, the only way to loate the station I want is to swith through every single station until I find it, whih is not as easy as it sounds, partiularly while driving. Plus, you wind up listening to a lot of rap, some of whih atually is rap. I suspet this an all be solved by replaing a fuse, but I've never gotten around to it.

I have a pair of pants with a small atsup stain on one knee. I should disard them, but I keep forgetting and sending them to the leaners, who an't lean them, and I never notie it when I put them on, so one every few weeks, I wind up wearing that atsup stain all day.

I just sent my friend Dave an e-mail from this omputer. Dave is more tehnologially ompetent than I. He told me that the problem ould be retified in just a few seonds, by pluking the key off my keyboard and blowing on the eletrial ontats beneath it. This reated a onundrum. I admit that prorastination is a disability, but, all in all, there is something oddly omforting about it. Life is full of annoying hores; if you heerfully neglet them, they annot turn your life into a tyranny of the mundane. You are making your own shedule, even if your shedule is idioti.

However, I will do it. I will do it beause I know what the last sentene of this olumn is going to be, and it is going to reate a problem:

Living with me must be like undergoing an unending root canal.

Gene Weingarten's e-mail address is weingarten@washpost.com. Chat with him online Tuesdays at noon.