Rolodex

The one item that's been with me my entire professional (snicker) career is a Rolodex I've had since 1989. It's not the classic 1950's kind that sits on a stand and actually rolls over. It's the weaker cousin version that looks sort of like a mini card catalog at the library. All of the letter tabs on it are dog-eared. And its stuffed with various business cards and scraps of paper that I've written phone numbers on but couldn't be bothered to transfer to cards. And true to john_clarke form, all of the phone numbers are organized by letter, but they're not in alphabetical order. They're filed in order of newness. So if I need a "B" phone number and I know if it's a newer number, it'll be located toward the front of the B section.

I never discard the phone number cards. So, for instance, I've got a business phone number for Karl Rove for when he was a private political consultant in Austin, way before he decided to groom a certain Bush into the president of the United States. And I've got lots of phone numbers for people that are dead.

If you change phone numbers on me, I'll just cross out the bad number and write another one on the same card. One guy --- a lawyer who hops from law firm to law firm every few years and is a good quote --- has five crossed out numbers. His most current number is in tiny script on the top right hand corner of his card.

I could put all of these numbers on a Palm Pilot. But F that. Who in the hell would keep the same Palm Pilot for 16 years?