ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Monday, April 21, 1997 TAG: 9704210109
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
COLUMN: BEN BEAGLE
SOURCE: BEN BEAGLE
I'm happy to be able to report that I've taken a test in this very newspaper that shows I'm not addicted to work.
I was pretty sure this was not a problem.
My father used to say I was so lazy I wouldn't take a job at a bakery biting holes in doughnuts.
Listen, a person who started refinishing an oak kitchen table in 1989 and isn't even through stripping the legs yet is no workaholic.
Ten years before that, our portable dishwasher broke and I put it in the basement. I thought I would at least go through the motions of taking the controls apart and having a couple of springs jump, never to be found again.
It's still there in the basement - all of its springs safe inside the controls. I suggested we might bury the washer and make a nice flower bed out of it. I was told:
"Why don't you get yourself something to do so you won't get all these screwy ideas all the time?"
And I said that during the Great Depression, people would have been glad to have a broken dishwasher for a flower bed. It certainly would have beaten river rocks painted white.
"Herman, the Beagles have done it again. You got to see their new flower bed."
In answering questions on this test, I said I never get upset about not being in total control of a situation.
The last time I was in control of a situation, I bought some dental floss on my own.
I also answered that I didn't spend a lot of time planning for events.
As far as I know, nobody has ever asked me to plan anything - although I do take the car in for an oil change when it needs it, and I sometimes lie awake planning what I'm going to have for breakfast. Which we don't have in the house.
I also don't put pressure on myself by imposing conditions on what I do, such as shoveling the driveway immediately after a 16-inch snow. I always wait to see if the sun will come out and melt it.
I'm not the type to prefer doing things myself. I'm always asking for help. I don't get it, but it never hurts to ask.
I never try to do three things at once - such as writing a memo, talking on the phone and having a sandwich. I expect you might write a pretty bad memo and get a lot of mustard on the phone if you did that.
I don't feel guilty when I don't have anything to work on. Even when I have things to work on, I take several naps a day.
I guess it's safe for me to say, now that I'm no longer full-time, that I often dozed off in the newsroom while other reporters were out there searching for the truth and protecting the public's right to know.
I probably would have napped through a fire that destroyed City Hall - which was right across the street.
If they had tests to see if you were a napaholic, I'd score pretty high.
Napaholics are nice people who never do three things at once. That would make them too sleepy.
LENGTH: Medium: 61 linesby CNB