Back when I was General Counsel at Boston Chicken (now Boston Market), I often emceed company gatherings, franchise development conferences, and holiday parties. One of the bits I used at such gatherings were Top Ten Lists in the style of such lists by David Letterman. Since David is retiring from Late Night and ... er ... late night, I thought it might be fun to do a little exercise in which I solicited from YOU, gentle readers, ten different top ten topics and tried to put together my own Top Ten Lists, one a day for the next ten days, in order to ease your transition to life without Dave during this difficult period. Since this idea came to me during a conversation with my friend and fellow writer Ed Herdrich, a real life private investigator, when we were chatting up ways to make his blog attract more followers, I’ll lead off with a bonus Top Ten List about private investigators to get you all in the mood: The Top Ten Reasons Not To Take Your Children Along on a Stakeout Number Ten: “Are we there yet?” is even more annoying in a stationary vehicle. Number Nine: Children have small bladders. Number Eight: Hours and hours of looped music from a smartphone video game will make you long to visit “It’s a Small World” after all. Number Seven: Having your kid point and shout “Is that the bad guy?” on sighting your target may result in your cover being blown. Number Six: Sitting in a vehicle with steamed up windows for hours on end with a small child and a camera attracts as much attention as browsing the children’s section at Barnes & Noble without a kid in tow. Number Five: You don’t want your kids to know Grand Theft Auto is an accurate representation of the real world. Number Four: Explaining why the fat man and the woman in the short dress checked into a motel for just an hour can be awkward. Number Three: The family that pees in an empty milk jug together doesn’t stay together. Number Two: You don’t want your kids to know you really do sit around all day doing nothing, just like their mother says. And the Number One Reason Not to Take Your Children Along on Stake-Outs: Small children are ineffective as body shields in the event of gunplay. Remember, if you don’t give me topics, I can’t do Top Ten Lists, so keep those comments and suggestions coming and I'll pick one each day for the next ten days and try to make a go of it. And if you like my particular brand of dark humor, you might want to check out Greensword: A Tale of Extreme Global Warming, my darkly humorous thriller about global warming, or Frame Shop, my mystery thriller set in a suburban writers’ group. As always, more about me and my writing at www.donaldjbingle.com. Aloha. Don Donald J. Bingle Writer on Demand™ www.donaldjbingle.com