CARLTON FLETCHER: The procrastinators’ creed: I’ll get around to it

“… maybe tomorrow.”

— The Eagles

OK, show-of-hands time. How many of you, like me, have a clock in your house or your vehicle that is an hour behind because you haven’t gotten around to “falling back” an hour with the onset of daylight saving time (or the end of it, I haven’t gotten around to looking up which one it actually is).

If you’re one of those with your hand in the air right now, welcome to the Procrastinators’ Club. It’s not an official club — I was going to start one a while back, but I never really got around to doing it — but you know if you’re a member. If you think “procrastinators” is too big a word to look up or to say, read the following list and see how many of the elements apply to you:

♦ Do you keep pushing trash down in you ever-expanding plastic garbage receptacle, certain “it’ll hold a little more,” until at some point the receptacle either breaks or springs back into shape, sending gooey garbage all over the floor? As opposed, say, to taking the garbage out?

♦ Are you one of those people waiting in line at the Post Office April 15 to put your income tax returns in the mail; you know, the ones who swear they’re going to beat the rush next year or say something clever like “I’m holding on to my money as long as I can before I send any to the government.”

♦ Do you do your Christmas shopping on Dec. 23 and 24?

♦ Do you have a stack of warranty information cards dating back several years sitting in a pile in your home office?

♦ Do your neighbors surreptitiously call Code Enforcement every couple of months in an effort to get you to cut the damned grass in your yard?

♦ Do you have unmailed birthday, graduation, holiday and other greeting cards stacked up on a corner of your desk? (Hint, the graduation cards may be intended for friends or relatives who have been out of college for years and are now expecting their second child, and the birthday cards with cute puppies, unicorns and rainbows may seem a little dated if you were to send them to individuals who are now in their teens.)

♦ Has that “little 5 pounds of extra weight” turned into 58 pounds as you’ve managed to put off your gym membership/diet/exercise program for yet another year?

♦ Does that “little spot” on your back now look vaguely like a map of Tennessee — with realistic raised mountain projections —♦ as you put off that physical yet another month?

♦ Has you plans to buy a new wardrobe been pushed to the backburner so routinely the old clothes you’ve been wearing forever have now actually gone through passe, laughably outdated and embarrassing phases and actually are back in as retro?

♦ Have you put off your twice-yearly dental checkups so often people have started asking you if you’re British?

If you answered yes to three of these 10 questions, it’s a pretty safe bet that you’ve got a touch of the procrastination bug. If you answered yes to six or more of them, your procrastination has become potentially dangerous to your health, both physical and financial. It might be time for you to get psychiatric help or start dating one of those anal types who freaks out of they fail to complete a task at least 24 hours ahead of schedule.

If you choose the latter, it will at least add a little spice to both of your lives … and set the neighbors up for fun evenings of listening in to your domestic squabbles.

So, whether you are a procrastinator by choice or by genetic disposition, remember the mottos of some of life’s greatest of the lot: “Never do today what you can put off until tomorrow” and “I’ll get around to it.”