# Two ticks, and three questions lost in the fold

> Five questions written down in advance. Two get ticked off in the room; the other three sit folded into the crease, unanswered.

August 21, 2026 · https://justog.club/stories/the-questions-you-forgot-to-ask

A torn scrap of paper, drawn large, carries five questions in biro. Two are ticked: `is it the same
one` and `how long`. The other three are folded into the crease and impossible to read.

Somebody wrote this at the kitchen table, in advance, and didn't get through it.

## What's actually on this scrap of paper?

A short list, written before an appointment, so the room wouldn't get to decide what got asked.

Five lines in biro on a torn edge — not a form, not anything printed, just a list made at home with
whatever paper was closest. It sits alongside [a printed sheet the room hands back afterwards](/stories/the-discharge-sheet-on-the-fridge),
but this one comes from the other direction: it's what the household brought in, not what it left
with.

## Why do the ticked questions read so plainly?

Because those two got asked, answered, and ticked before anyone lost their nerve or ran out of
time.

`is it the same one` and `how long` are short for a reason — they're the kind of question that has
a short answer, and short questions are the ones that survive a rushed ten minutes intact. Longer,
more specific questions take more room to ask and more room to answer, which is exactly the kind
that gets crowded out.

## Why are the other three lines illegible in the design?

Because they're unfinished business, not content — nobody, including whoever wrote them, could
now say precisely what they were.

The fold that hides them is an accident of how the paper got carried, not a deliberate cover, and
that's what makes it the right detail: real unanswered questions are usually just the ones that
ran out of time, not the ones anybody chose to withhold. Drawing them legible would have made them
into information the article doesn't have and shouldn't invent.

## Is it normal to walk out having forgotten half of what you meant to ask?

Yes — completely, and it's the entire reason a list like this gets written in the first place.

A room with somebody listening hard, a limited window, and information arriving faster than it can
be filed is not where most people think clearly. The list exists precisely because memory alone
isn't reliable there — the same reason [a household starts filming an animal at home instead of
trusting a description](/stories/the-video-you-took-for-the-vet). Ticking two off and losing
three to a fold isn't a failure of the method — it's what the method is for, since at least two
questions got a real answer that might not have otherwise.

## Do I need permission to print my own handwriting like this?

No — a personal list in your own hand belongs entirely to whoever wrote it.

There's no third party to clear here: it's a household's own words, on a household's own scrap of
paper, printed as itself. A generic biro-on-torn-paper style is free for anyone to draw in; nobody
owns handwriting, and nobody owns the fact of forgetting to ask something.

## Does a list like this help on a first visit as much as a routine one?

More, usually — a first visit is where the most gets said and the least gets retained.

A routine follow-up has fewer surprises and a shorter list. A first appointment is often the one
where a household is hearing several new things at once, which is exactly when a prepared list
earns its keep and exactly when it's most likely to end up half-ticked anyway. Whatever the
appointment settles usually gets recorded somewhere else entirely — [a single tick beside a total
that took no time to agree to](/stories/the-bill-you-didnt-argue-with) is the household's other
short record from the same kind of day.

## Does it print well?

Yes — a torn edge, a hard crease shadow and biro linework are all well inside what holds up at
garment size.

The torn edge is kept irregular rather than straight, which is what makes it read as paper rather
than a printed rectangle. The crease shadow is drawn as one confident dark line rather than a soft
gradient, so it survives the weave instead of going muddy. Cream, oat or bone all keep the biro
lines reading crisp against the ground.

## How do I get one made?

Describe the list at [JustOG](/) — how many lines, which ones are ticked, and how it's folded.
Pick a direction, drag the crop frame, see it composited on the real garment, and it's made to
order and shipped.

Designs other people have published are in the [shop](/shop).

The next list starts before this one's even back in a drawer, three lines longer than it needs to
be.