COLUMN: Go ahead, mess with me
I dream of being organized like a fat man dreams about big buckets of fried chicken. I can almost taste the extra crispy morsels of breading delighting my ears and taste buds at the same time, the excess oil dripping down my chin and coating my fingers. I swallow it greedily yet knowing I will never be fully satisfied.
I am just as sensually a fool for every come-on and advertisement featuring uncluttered drawers, alphabetically filed music collections and garages that actually have room for cars. I yearn for those tool-bench pegboards where every tool fits in a precisely placed outline of itself, every sweater in its own cedar-lined nook, neatly stacked cans of fruits and vegetables with their labels all facing forward on rotating shelves, those tiny one-serving Tupperware containers for single serving leftovers, organized stacks of frozen meat with clearly written labels on expertly folded and taped white paper, and tax returns filed on Jan. 12.
Am I wrong to have these fantasies? Should I just give up and slide into the mire of mess? I constantly flog myself with flagellant zeal for my shortcomings. Is it wrong that my clothes go straight from my clean laundry basket to my body and back to the dirty laundry basket without that superfluous intermediate step of being put in drawers? Or am I just more efficient? These questions haunt me daily.
I know I’m not old-lady-at-the-end-of-the-block-with-20-cats messy, but I likewise know that cleanliness may be close to godliness, but not in the dictionary and not to an agnostic. I swear that more stuff leaves my house than comes in, but I’m still losing ground. I’m drowning in detritus, floundering in flotsam and treading water in the tendrils of all my hobbies.
At least some of my malady is beyond my control. The missing socks of the world apparently all come through a portal directly to my laundry basket. The dead letters, the extra junk mail? It is all forwarded to me.
All the scraps of wood discarded since Noah’s ark was dry-docked have landed in my garage. The arachnid curiously named “Cob” may have gone extinct, but it has left its webs all over my house.
Fortunately I do have a photographic mind. I can see exactly, in my head, where everything is. Unfortunately I just can’t tell anybody else what I’m seeing.
But so what? Are better-organized people happier than me? Do they experience more complete love and fulfillment in their lives, or are they slaves to their Palm Pilots and recipes on index cards secretly yearning to be more lax like me. I know there are a few people who still love and appreciate me for who I am, and if I could only find their addresses I would thank them. But don’t feel sorry for me and as a last request, don’t dress me up in a suit and tie in a neatly lined coffin when I pass. Have the decency and respect to throw in a few unread magazines, AOL CDs and expired Papa Murphy’s pizza coupons.
Dennis Hinkamp’s column appears every Friday in The Statesman. Comments can be sent to slightlyoffcenter@attbi.com.