Living with three notepads
An old piece. One I'm fond of.

I have a confession to make. I have three notepads. Don't look at me like that! I'm not a bad person just because I have three notepads. Anyway, I didn't mean to have three notepads. It just happened that way. And the worst part is, when I pick them up, I can't even tell them apart...

It's not that I just use my notepads. Honestly, I love my notepads, I love all three! It's just that they resemble each other and sometimes, when I'm tired I pick up the wrong pad. I flick through the pages, looking for a name and then... I realise I'm holding the wrong pad, turning the wrong pages. I have to put it away then, because i just can't face the accusing words, written so clearly on the pages.

It's possible to love more than one pad at a time you know.

I think it began long ago, when my first pad abandoned me. I was very young and it left a deep impression on me. Ever since then I've been seeking more pads, new pads. I don't feel happy with just one pad. A voice within me keeps saying more! I try and resist it, I do my best to remain faithful to one pad, but then it happens. I walk into a store to pick up something, like a new pen, and right there, right in front of me, are so many pads. Displaying themselves, so shamelessly, in front of me!

And one of them will say to me that it is the one, that it is special. How can I refuse it, how can I not pick it up, lying there, right in front of me!

Prurient pads! Mocking my self control, enslaving my will, controlling me!

If there is a special hell for men who can't stay loyal to their pads, I'm headed there. I'm beyond reform, beyond redemption.

May God have mercy on my soul.