Literature and lists

“Good luck to that MFer.” 

What does that mean? For which MFer is this well-wish intended? I had (and still have) the very same questions when I found this note written at the top of an old grocery list. The whole thing was in my handwriting so I know that it’s not Samuel L. Jackson’s grocery list. I just can’t remember writing it. 

*****

Meanwhile, two very unfortunate MFers share a cell in a Marseilles prison. It’s a hot August day, sometime in the middle of the 19th century. This is the opening scene of Charles Dickens’ Little Dorrit, which I just started for the first time. I know almost nothing about Little Dorrit, except that the main character, Amy Dorrit, is a young English woman raised in the Marshalsea, a debtors prison where her father is an inmate. Debtors' prisons feature very prominently in David Copperfield, one of my favorite books ever, and so I’m optimistic about this one. But these two prisoners in France are as yet a mystery to me. I don’t know why they’re in prison - for debt or some other offense - and I don’t know who they are and what connection they might have with the Dorrit family. But the first few pages are riveting, and I can’t wait to see what happens. 

*****

Back to the old grocery list with the cryptic headline. It was in an old handbag that I hadn’t used in some time. That bag just popped into my head one day, so I dug it out of my closet, and I liked it so much that I decided to use it again for a while. That’s the upside of having too many bags. I can always shop for a new one in my very own closet. 

It had been at least two years - maybe more - since the last time I carried this bag, making the grocery list at least that old. And try as I may, I really cannot recall having written it, and I also cannot recall which of possibly many MFers to whom I might have wished good luck - either sincerely or sarcastically. Whoever it was, I hope everything worked out for them.