A GREAT AND FINAL RECKONING
Elizabeth Willis Barrett……….April 2021
I love to do the sudoku puzzles on my phone with the sudoku.com app. They can take my mind away from long lines, long drives and other long miscellaneous waiting times.
Whenever I write the wrong number in a square, though, it turns red. Red! There might as well be a giant buzzer go off that everyone can hear for the distress that red number brings me.
I know I rightly deserve the red number chastisement most of the time, but sometimes, I hit the wrong number when the “off” button is on and I’m trying to take that very number out of the square, not put it.
“Wait, wait, wait!” I want to say. “I didn’t mean to put that number in that square. Big Brother, please don’t record that mistake in your huge book of reckoning kept on every mortal that ever lived.”
Maybe it was while reading George Orwell’s book 1984 a while back that gave me this strange feeling that my entire life is being recorded by a “Big Brother.” And that sometime, somewhere there will be held a great and final reckoning.
Actually, I really do believe in a Final Judgment, but I don’t plan on a loving God caring too much about my Sudoku mistakes. He’s got a lot more to worry about with me. So when I write about a Big Brother figure keeping score, I am definitely not talking religion. Whew, just had to say that!
So back to Big Brother. There are other things I think might be reviewed for accuracy. What if I write the wrong date on the back of a picture? What if I write someone’s last name wrong in my journal? Or, speaking of journals, what if the places, or the events aren’t exactly where or how they happened? What if they are compared to someone else’s account of things and I got it all wrong? Will all journals be brought to trial for truth in recording?
Then there are the lists of books I’ve listened to. What if I entered one more than once? What if I forgot that I had already listened to it and wrote it on the list without making a note that it was the second or third listening of that same book?
There are all the times my computer has yelled at me because I did something wrong like hit the command button instead of the shift button. Those moments, too, are unsettling. Are they also written up?
Will my meticulously kept Quicken account of every single expenditure of my life be scrutinized for truth and exactness? Will my score on “Word Crush” be put into some enormous equation? Perhaps to counter a lack in some other area? How ‘bout my very high score in “Spell Grid?”
Will I be held accountable for all the minutes used or wasted? That would make a very interesting printout!
I think I really will be held accountable for mean things I say about others who in my opinion definitely deserve it; but I still feel badly that I sometimes don’t keep their indiscretions to myself. That might be Final Judgment material. And I’d rather not go there just now. That list of blunders would be never ending.
So, for the moment, I’ll just stick with Big Brother and get on to the big stuff some other day.
