If you are like me, while all of your friends are complaining about tennis elbow, you're suffering from TV neck. I thought rheumatism was setting in early until my doctor -- after X-raying me from head to toe, including parts of me I never knew existed -- finally asked how many hours per day I spent on the living room sofa contemplating reruns. (He didn't believe me when I told him this was considered the most highly developed form of meditation known to man.)

Recognizing what he considered to be a terminal case of laziness, he hit me between the eyes with a revolting prescription: work. And to make sure I did some, he handed me his bill. I told him I'd think about it.

I tried to explain to the doctor that writers are at their most creative while watching Family Feud and inhaling Fudgetown cookies, but he wouldn't listen. After all the years he put in just to become a doctor (including straight A's in "healthy billing"), he was inclined to look down his nose at someone who practiced his craft in college by handing term papers in late and by adding further questions to the tests rather than answering the ones already there.

And, like many people, the doctor wouldn't believe me when I tried to tell him that thinking had something to do with writing. (The greatest thing about being a writer is that you can always say you have been thinking, even if you have been in a coma.)

In between his efforts to prop me up, the doctor went through a checklist of other telltale signs of laziness and procrastination. This test was developed by a researcher named Dr. I. Doan Wanna who scheduled his lab work around soap operas. I've listed the symptoms here in case you think you, too, may be prone to proneness.

• Your appointment calendar is still open to August 10, 1957.
• All of your clocks haven't been wound in decades, so you have learned to tell time by the amount of dust under the bed.
• You have always thought "belated" and "birthday" meant the same thing.
• You never allow the ratio of dishes to be washed to the dishes in the cupboard to fall below 10 to 1.
• You almost convinced your neighbors that you grew up on a farm and purposefully wanted your yard to look like a hayfield, but your Brooklyn accent gave you away.
• You use tap water to make instant coffee.
• Alarm clocks give you the hives.
• A dinner of potato chips is a family tradition.
• You told the I.R.S. that your occupation is daydreaming.
• You never tune up the car until the engine begins to shoot parts into the street.
• You only shave during a full moon.
• Thirty years ago you put a Robert Goulet album on the stereo and have listened to the same record ever since.
• You believe your groom should "love, honor, and do the dishes."
• You're hoping wrinkled clothing will come into style.
• Eating means grabbing anything close that doesn't talk, bark, or meow.
• When you realized you needed exercise, you hid the push button phone and began a strong regimen of dialing.
• You believe that office correspondence should be aged like wine.
• When you get romantic you say "I Love Lucy" instead of "I love you."

The biggest problem for those of us who practice these traits is that we are made to feel guilty about them. All my life I have heard of how industrious my Pilgrim ancestors were. One day I finally lay down and thought about it. Aside from procuring food and shelter, the Pilgrims had little to distract them, except, perhaps, for occasionally teaching the Indians to play strip poker.

This was when I realized my family had neglected to tell me about the other side of the American dream: that laziness is the mother of invention. Would Edison have invented the lightbulb if he could have found a 3-way candle? Would there be an automobile if someone hadn't tired of lugging around a giant pooper-scooper? Would anyone have bothered to invent the wheel if God had made everything round in the first place?

We followers of the put-it-off-until-it-absolutely-must-be-done-or-find-a-way-
around-it school of thought are really responsible for many of the improvements we have today. We can also be proud that we are far too unmotivated to go about starting wars. After all, walking on our own is hard enough, let alone trying to do it in step with other people. Of course, even we have to be careful in this day and age, since wars can now be started at the push of a button.

Obviously we have plenty to be proud of. So if your doctor accuses you of sloth, and it doesn't require too much effort to do so, remind him of what I did mine: "Without work nothing gets accomplished, and we're the ones who do our best to accomplish it."