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LOOK UNDER N FOR NEAT 3rd Place Winner By Sarah Newsom Ocean Springs MS
It’s not easy to live with a man who arranges his underwear drawer in alphabetical order and sends his socks and tee shirts to the laundry. With each passing year, I am more convinced that he is a humanoid programmed by a computer. I, on the other hand, am so disorganized that my tongue doesn’t know what my teeth are doing. Each part of my body has a mind of its own. If I can bring my two hands together to clap, I have experienced the thrill of victory. This physical chaos spills over into other areas of my life as well. For example, I am a cruelty joke when it comes to housework. Over the years hubby has tried to help me change my bad habits by his good examples. I am both amazed and appalled by his good intentions. His records and tapes are color coded and stored according to a spin off of the Dewey Decimal system. His card catalogue lists them under song, singer and category. They are played chronologically from A to Z according to the singer’s last name. I can tell the day, hour and month from the sounds which spill forth from the stereo. Once I wanted to hear a Willie Nelson record, but he was still on Glenn Campbell, I had to wait another month. The keys on his key ring are arranged according to size, shape, and color. The bills in his wallet are, of course, sorted by denomination. Credit cards are filed alphabetically. He uses just one card per month. I’m sure you’ve already guessed that he has separate piggy banks for pennies, nickels, dimes, quarters and half dollars. He claims that everybody does this as it is the only logical thing to do. Even the post office manager complains when he insists upon renting six mail boxes for his six categories of mail: personal letters, bills, junk mail, newspapers, magazines and packages. He eats in the same orderly fashion. He starts at the 12 o’clock position of his plate and eats one bite at a time from each item on the plate ‘til he’s back to the starting place. Because of this fetish, he does not eat casseroles as there is no proper starting place. I think what he would really like is a partitioned plate like children use so that no two foods could touch. He never eats dessert first or salad last like I do. He says it would confuse his digestive tract which I am sure is programmed according to the four basic food groups. He could host an open house in his closet any hour of the day, any day of the year. His shoes are lined up in military formation and separated into appropriate sections: boots, slippers, dress shoes and sneakers. His clothes are the same. No self-respecting moth would feel comfortable living in his closet. I am stressing the man’s need for orderliness for a selfish purpose. I plead for your help and understanding. I am a hurricane. He is the eye. Problems arise. Just the other day I caught him again. He was in the pantry rearranging the items according to their riboflavin content. For some mysterious reason he feels compelled to stack cans of matching soup together. He puts canned fruit on one shelf, and canned vegetables on another shelf. Thank goodness he places the crackers next to the peanut butter. He develops a migraine if a box of Crunch and Burp cereal rests beside a box of cake mix. Pasta naturally must be stored horizontally. Spices are arranged by country of origin. He insists that frozen items be stored in the freezer. He does not consider toothpaste to be a frozen item. He tells me the laundry room would be an appropriate place to store bleach and detergent and suggests that soap would not be out of place in the bathroom. It is most confusing. Until I met him, I just left everything in the grocery bags and when I needed something, I knew where it was. Once he’s satisfied with the pantry, he moves on to the cooking and eating utensils. Pots and pans are fitted with their proper lids. Glasses are put on one shelf and cups on another. Knives, forks and spoons are sorted and filed properly in the tray. The salt, sugar, flour, coffee and tea canisters are refilled with whatever is printed on the outside. He often complains when I put tea in the coffee canister. I told him to lighten up and that he could look at them and tell the difference. He maintains that when he is trying to make a pot of coffee at 5 a.m. he cannot yet see nor smell. When he finally gets the kitchen in order ( his order ), I am in a state of total confusion. It is impossible to find a thing. “Where is the coffee pot?” I yell in bewilderment. “Right where it should be,” he answers. “Between the bundt pan and the cookie sheet.” When he heads for the linen closet, my spastic colon kicks in. My linen closet is like a king size version of my purse. He patiently tells me that many people store their towels and sheets in different areas of the closet. He even suggested once that I might save time when retrieving items if I would sort sheets into twin, regular, queen and king and stack them with others of the same size. I am constantly amazed by his ability to cut right through a complex problem like that and arrive at a simple solution. “Everything has a place and should be in its place.” I’ve heard him recite that a thousand times. I wasn’t sure just how dedicated he was to that philosophy until recently. He roared into the room breathing fire and smoke and demanded, “Where is my Swiss army knife?” “Cut out the dragon act and I’ll tell you,” I replied. “It’s in the sink in the laundry room, I used it to scale and filet the fish our neighbor brought over.” “You used my Swiss army knife to scale a fish?” he thundered incredulously. “How many times have I told you that my Swiss army knife is a precision instrument and is not intended to be used for such menial chore?” “None,” I replied. “We have never discussed your Swiss army knife until this very minute, and I think you are overreacting. You have had that knife for seventeen years and it’s never even been out of the original box until today. What made you think of it?” “I was rearranging my tools and something was clearly missing between my scalpel and my switchblade knife.” I threw in the towel right then and there. If I ever need to filet a fish again, I’ll use my fingernail file. If he’s been sorting through the trash can that I use for miscellaneous items, I’ll find it right where it belongs...between my earmuffs and my garterbelt. I’ve put a padlock on my closet door. If he ever looked in there, he have cardiac arrest. Like him, I do have a filing system. The A B C posted on my closet door means Always Be Careful! |
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