Generics and Data Access Layer

i have created a DAL using Generics like so

public List <myObject> GetItems(){

    list<myObject> o = new list<MyObject>();
    ....do stuff here

    return o. 

}

this works great but i was wondering what i do if i only wanted to return one of these objects.  my DAL will have methods like :

  getAllitems
  getItemById 


since "getItemById" will only return one item, is it still recommended to create a list and add the single item to that list then return it? or is there perhaps a better way when returning only one object?

thanks in advance,

mcm
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