This Order

I used to have an uncanny ability to handle disorder. This was so because it wasn’t disorder at all. It was more like a deep-seated desire to piss my Mom off as a teenager; why of course I could find anything in my room, despite what she might think. “You want me to prove it,” I’d say, “well just ask me to find something?” Guess she never did and I’d have to “clean up” my room anyway, her way. Uhhhg!

But I always kept to my orderly way, in a way. Take my books for instance. I could find any book I wanted from any pile whenever I wanted. There was order in my apparently disordered piles. I mean it. I could go from shelve to shelve, from horizontal to vertical stacks, and find the title I wanted as though I knew the exact locations with photographic memory. I’d get this sudden urge to read, whatever, say, Notes from the Underground -- yes, I was a strange kid, an angry kid -- and I’d find it on the fourth pile on the left. Just like that.

That ability has gone. I still have piles: in my office, on my desk, on my night table, but I no longer know where that particular title is to be found. (And you know that you always need that book, the one, the one you can’t find.)

This is somehow connected to bicycles. No, let’s not exaggerate. I do know where I park my bike at work and it is difficult to misplace my Piglet it in my garage – almost. But it happens most often with my bike tools and gear and I have but very few of those, mind you. But damn I had the screwdriver right by the rear wheel! Where did I put the light? My vest? The pump? What’s the pump doing in my wife’s bike when I needed it just on this ride?! (Not to mention the spare tube with the wrong valve to fit my pump; or was it the right pump to fit the wrong tube?)

I guess I’m just not what I used to be; my type of order has finally grown up. I know, Mom, I know. “I told you so.”