I like to think of myself as a flexible guy — able to roll with the punches, able to work around problems, able to, y’know, cope. It’s amazing how quickly and how profoundly that self-image can be shaken simply by adding an extra person to the household.
Recently fallen on some sudden, transitory, but inarguably hard times, The Stepson will be staying with us for a while. Whatever other effects this has wrought and will continue to wreak on the delicate ballet of The Missus’s and my everyday life, it has revealed in me — to myself — a deep attachment to Keeping Trivial Things Unchanged.
Case in point: tableware. It really doesn’t matter that The Missus and I (mostly I, probably) have always kept the matched flatware in the drawer in the plastic bin with the variously sized and shaped little niches: one each for big knives, butter knives, dinner forks, teaspoons, tablespoons, and dessert forks. It doesn’t really matter that the various mismatched flatware (teaspoons, mostly) is just sort of tumbled together at the front of the drawer, where it can be easily retrieved without having to root around. It doesn’t really matter that we use the mismatched teaspoons just for dishing out canned pet food.
And, especially, it doesn’t really matter that all these neat little anal-retentive/obsessive-compulsive categories of household objects and their uses are suddenly blurring around the edges.
So if all that doesn’t really matter, whence the pursed-lips exasperation I suddenly find on my face when I go to feed the dog or cat and can’t find any mismatched teaspoons, but plenty of the matched sort? or when I pull open the drawer and find dessert forks and dinner forks shamelessly copulating in each others’ apartments?
What’s wrong with me?
I know: nothing is wrong with me. Everybody has his or her little “things” (or so goes the palliative advice which I can even now hear myself offering someone else in similar straits). Crotchets, right?
And yet, dang, I’m disappointed in myself. None of it is worth making an issue over, all of it could be corrected simply by putting a bug (or series of bugs) in The Stepson’s ear — or The Missus’s, come to that. But nope. Me, I’d apparently prefer to pout.
DarcKnyt says
Unfortunately for me, I can relate to this. Upsetting the apple cart, to any degree, is something I don’t handle as well as I’d like. I’ve known for many years I have anal retentive/OCD tendencies, but I never know the depth and degree until something comes along to pitch and yaw the boat. No matter how subtle the tipping.
I want to be more mature than I am too about these things, but it’s like a tic. It isn’t something I can correct, I don’t think.
John says
Darc: I wonder if this is something uniquely male. And if so, what it springs from — what the evolutionary value would be. Maybe something like routine breeds predictability, and predictability increases survival odds?
cynth says
See, I can see myself getting annoyed by these things now that the children have moved on. But when you have small human beings who are constantly in motion, upturning things, dumping things, rearranging things by size, color, the things that start with s, you become immune to these nuances. And then they grow up and move away. And when they come home, the put things away in the “wrong place” and it messes with your sense of order, which you did without for 20-some years. I don’t think it’s a male thing. I’m not sure what it is.
As our mother used to remind me, “this too shall pass”. And another great line, “pick your battles and forget the rest.” Good luck with that.
marta says
Oh, this sort of thing drives me crazy–sorry to say. My mother-in-law will put away our dishes… it then takes me find things. And when she comes over and gets herself a glass of water she uses a beer glass because she can never find the water glasses. That is what she says every time. She says that and that she didn’t realize they were beer glasses. Even though I’ve told many, many time.
And our kitchen is tiny. There are four cabinets. And we’ve lived in this apartment for 5 years with the glasses in the same cabinets. This drives me way crazier than it should. Who cares? There is nothing wrong with drinking water in a beer glass. There is no glass-substance police.
We all have our things–like you say.
John says
cynth: I’m actually not, y’know, counting the minutes until this too passes. My impatience really is directed at myself, for letting this get to me.
What happened, probably, was that I was on my own, years ago, just long enough to establish a sense of the way things “should” be. (I often maintain that keeping things just so is the best way to ensure that they don’t get lost and/or mishandled.) Departures from the norm require me all of a sudden to think about and act on inconsequential stuff (“Hmm, where’s X? not there, maybe it’s over here…”) — which means I’m thinking less about stuff that counts.
marta: Agreed, all down the line. A funny thing in my case, though, is that I pretty much regard myself as a slob in most areas: my desks (work and home) piled with paper and books, pencils and pens scattered every which way, CDs — labeled (or not) and in jewel cases (or not) — in teetering stacks…
This is why I do not think I’ll ever post a photo of my work area. At least not until I get much better at Photoshop, haha.
s.o.m.e.one's brudder says
This is almost identical to our twice/thrice yearly upset of the kitchen drawers – Easter, Thanksgiving, & Christmas/New Years Day. These two/three events for which we usually host some kind of occasion, inevitably lead to weeks of sorting out the “helpful” putting away of stuff. I have reached a peace if only in knowing that I HAVE coped for 15 years with this most disturbing behavior of our “helpful” guests. At least they usually bring wine with them, which helps me to forget why it matters at all. Maybe it’s also because I’ve got so much other sh#t that causes me strife and upset, that it CAN drift to the bottom of the list. But that one time that I can’t find the corkscrew ever since my favorite sister-in-law from …. was here, when I need that wine bottle open – does make my NUTS!
s.o.m.e.one's brudder says
Oops! me vs. my in the last sentence. Now THAT makes ME REALLY crazy! Bad editing….
John says
brudder: I could edit the comment to fix it up but this page really needed something funny. Nyuk nyuk.
The Missus and I have twin self-indulgences as working homeowners: we have a guy mow the lawn every 2-3 weeks, so I don’t have to do it; and we have a maid come in every couple weeks to clean up the bathrooms and counters, vacuum everything thoroughly, and so on, so The Missus doesn’t have to do it.
The maid’s another one. You can almost see the thought process that goes on in her head when she’s holding (say) a Pyrex pitcher which she has just washed: Let me see, now… Does this go HERE, where all the glassware is? or does it go HERE, where the other Pyrex things are? or…? (etc.). We’re constantly finding things weeks later that we’d given up on. The current fugitive is a napkin holder. Plastic, so it’s not like it’s valuable, let alone irreplaceable. Still: crazy-making.
Of course you know I’m dying to find out what the “…” represents. If it is what I think it is, boy, have I got a re-gift for you.
Jules says
Cynth is right about the immunity to this that develops when one has kids, but — having said that — the very hemispheres of my brain still hurt if I walk in a room and things are SCATTERED. I can handle things not being in their usual place, but a superficial mess makes my head ache. (I say “superficial,” because I’m hardly a clean-a-holic. I’d like to just at least LOOK like things are straight, though. Following kids around and cleaning up their messes like this, which I do about three times a day probably, is like trying to leash a bumblebee, but nonethless, I do it.)
I agree with picking the battles. Also: Trying to see the big picture. But, I know: It’s easier said than done!
Good luck.
(And Happy Thanksgiving, I say, as The Husband and I take a break from meal prep and sit down for a moment)
John says
Jules: Probably in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, I read somewhere about two types of great mechanics: the kind who have all their tools neatly organized and hanging from pegboard (e.g. wrenches in ascending order of size); and the kind whose work areas follow no discernible pattern.
I don’t know that I’d use the word “great” for myself, especially in conjunction with the word “mechanic.” But I totally identify with the latter kind. When I have to use some sort of system, I can never remember exactly how I’ve filed something. But if I can organize things into vague lumps of similarity, I can usually remember where in a given lump a given thing resides (if that makes sense).
marta says
I’m glad I came back and read all the comments just to think about leashing a bumblebee.
John says
marta: That was a great throwaway line from Jules, wasn’t it?
Saints and Spinners says
I can relate. I think it’s wise that I live with other people (a husband and a 6 year old daughter) because on my own, I would become so accustomed to having things be just so that a visitor coming in and messing up my system would rattle me more than it does now. As a housemate said when I lived in a brownstone in NYC with 11 other people (!!), “Everyone puts away the cutting board in the place where his or her mother would put it.” We had a floating cutting board….
John says
S & S: Thanks for dropping by; good to see you here.
Crazy thought: getting everybody’s mother together at one time, in one kitchen, each with her own cutting board. Tell them: Wonderful to see you all here, ladies! On 3, please put your cutting board away, okay? 1… 2…
I bet your housemate was right: given 12 mothers, you’d wind up with a cutting board in each of 12 different locations. Plus 12 bruised egos and, maybe, foreheads. :)
Tessa says
Better late than never … for pure, gut-rotting frustration, you can’t beat living with someone for 20 years and he STILL hasn’t worked out where things go! I know, John, in the great scheme of things, it matters not a whit, but I still want to take a blunt instrument to The First Husband when I spend hours looking for a vegetable peeler and eventually find it carefully put away in some utterly illogical place. Gargh!
John says
Tessa: Ha! an all too familiar feeling!
I will say that I’ve got a thousand complex, interrelated reasons why I put all the various Object X’s in the house in all the corresponding Location Y’s. (For example, “These bowls go in this cabinet with these dishes, rather than in the one with the matching dishes, because the only place to keep them in the latter is on top of the stack of dishes — making it extremely difficult to remove dishes because you’ve got to keep lifting a tower of bowls.”) It’s probably almost impossible for normal people to understand them all, even if I took the time to explain them, and I’m sure I seem an absolute nut job to both Missus and Stepson.