Sometimes I make lists to help me stay focused. My brain works better from a list. A handwritten list is best because I am not yet connected by an umbilical cord to my phone. A piece of paper in my pocket is like a string tied around my finger.

No one uses the string gimmick anymore, I suppose. And I am well aware that I am in a slowly disappearing group of ancient relics who still use paper and pen.

I see young couples in the grocery store pushing a buggy and referring to their phones. I can tell that their list resides in digital format. They are smart. Their phones are smart.

They look at me and see a white-headed guy strolling with his buggy. I have a creased piece of paper in my hand that rests on the handle of the buggy. It’s creased because it arrived at the store folded up in my shirt pocket. I push down one aisle, stop at the end, refer to my list, and move around the next endcap.

“What is he doing?” the wife asks the husband.

“I don’t know,” he says, “but I think he has his shopping list on that little piece of paper.”

“How sad!”

I also make lists of little jobs that I want to do around the house. I have a paper notepad by my seat in the family room. I make lists of shop supplies I need from the hardware store. I make lists of funny one-liners I hear. I make lists of movies I’d like to watch. Lists of ideas for Christmas presents. Lists of things I need to put on the calendar. Lists of songs I would like to learn. Sometimes I even make lists of the names of people I’ve met to help me remember who they are.

I am currently using my laptop to write instead of pen and paper, but what you are about to read started out the old-fashioned way. I’ve been thinking while doing other stuff. An idea would occur to me while eating oatmeal, and I would write it down. I’ve been making my list thinking about you.

A good list has a title. It can be simple like “Shop”. Otherwise, I’ll find the list, look at it, and wonder what the heck I was writing down.

The title of today’s list is “What the World Needs.”

There is no assumption on my part that I really know what the world needs. Mostly, I was feeling a little bit nostalgic, thinking about some of the simple things that get overlooked. You, no doubt, could make a list far better than mine

I was thinking about the fact that we are headed into the holiday season which tends to make us do better as human beings. When November arrives, we seem to be more civil, more thankful, more generous toward others. We, at least, try to embrace the spirit of the season.

So, I’ve compiled a list to help you and me remember a few simple lessons in life. Things we sometimes forget. Things that get lost once we become adults with property taxes, doctor’s appointments, and pharmaceutical commercials.

At the top of my list, Klondike Bars. Believe it or not, I had my very first Klondike Bar a few nights ago. Marion almost fell out when I told her that. “Have you been living under a rock?” she asked. And now I have decided that if we all had Klondike Bars, just once or twice a week, the joy factor would blow the roof off.

When I was a kid, my dad believed with his whole being that ice cream would make the world right. We would be sitting, watching an episode of the Smothers Brothers, and dad would ask me, “How ‘bout some ice cream?” I never turned him down.

The small pink and blue plastic bowls were our ice cream bowls. He loved Neapolitan. He used a butcher knife to cut it out of the cardboard container, making sure to get the right balance of vanilla, chocolate, and strawberry in each bowl. TV was better with ice cream.

The world needs more backyard hide and seek. The kind where kids of all ages run and scream at full tilt in the dark. Where scraped knees are brushed off and mercurochrome saves the leg from having to be amputated. The kind where older kids don’t mind playing with the younger ones. Where big sisters punch bullies in the gut and tell them to play fair.

We need the games that don’t run on batteries and that require imagination. The kind where mop handles become bats, and wadded up tin foil becomes a baseball. We need made-up games with made-up rules. Games that let kids figure out ways to make a dull afternoon fun.

The world needs moms who don’t mind dirt and mud and grime on the kitchen floor. Moms who keep a gallon jug of Kool Aid in the fridge and enough extra bologna on hand to feed a team of kids who just show up.

The world needs more kids on bicycles, more kids playing in creeks, more kids swimming in lakes. Kids who aren’t afraid of leeches, who catch frogs and put them in jars, and who let them go after dark. Kids who build forts in the woods with twine and limbs and stuff they “borrow” from their dads.

We need adults who know how to lay on their backs in the middle of a field just to watch the clouds go by. We need summer afternoons with bare feet in the creek, mud between our toes, catching crawdads just for fun. We need some of you brave enough to play hooky from work, steal your kid outta third period, and go fishing, or shoot hoops, or just get lost in the woods and sit down by the biggest tree you can find and carve your initials in the trunk.

I guess what I’m saying is that what the world needs is for all of us busy adults to slow down enough once in a while to remember what it’s like to be a kid. A child doesn’t have baggage. He doesn’t care so much about politics, thank goodness. He doesn’t know yet how to be so darn negative about the world. He takes life in stride.

Most kids are willing to say “hi” to total strangers. They are willing to share their ice cream. They laugh so hard at something funny that they never think about being embarrassed. They seldom pay attention to how they look or how they dress. They believe in everything good and forgive those that disappoint them.

Think I’m being ridiculous? You think I’m off my rocker? Who has time to be a kid again? No respectable adult acts like a child, and if they do, they get fired.

Well, I’ve got some pretty heavy support behind what I’m saying here. Ancient wisdom. Advice straight from the Top.

“Unless you become as little children, you cannot inherit the kingdom.”

I’d say it’s time to stop whatever you’re doing and get a Klondike Bar.

You in?