Remember last week? When I said I try to alternate who I talk about? Well everyone in those posts has taken a stand against me. Against my guiding principles.
It’s almost like they contest the things I’ve said about them.
Which is weird. It’s all true.
It all started ten days ago. You may question how I can be so specific, but when you’ve discovered something horrible about the person you love, that you’ve built a life with, that you’ve reproduced with, you remember the day it all came crashing down around your ears.
Don was making himself a sandwich while explaining changes in his coming work schedule. I watched in abject horror as he sliced the sandwich horizontally. Horizontally! Aghast, I – as calmly as I could – asked what the hell he was doing.
Don thought I was asking about his work schedule. As if that has ever mattered. I never anticipate that Don will be home any given day. I assume he will be working. Or hunting. Or working on hunting. I’m never disappointed and always pleasantly surprised if he happens to be home.
I pointed to his sandwich, like a horror movie heroine pointing at the slasher/ghost/demon. Don was oblivious. I had to spell it out for him.
Sandwiches should be cut vertically, for symmetry. Diagonally is also acceptable. Never horizontally. Horizontal cutting is asymmetrical and awful.
Don thought I was joking.
I was not joking, nor would I ever.
Suffice it to say Don thought my horror ill-placed. There is no right way or wrong way to cut a sandwich, he maintained. It tastes the same.
Can you believe him?
Our son was equally mystified – and a bit angry – by my insistence that sandwiches should not be cut horizontally. He began sending me increasingly dreadful photos of sandwiches, bizarre cuts mangling their form like the aforementioned slasher flick heroines.
I haven’t slept well these last ten days.
Last night I went to Willie and Indy’s. They’re having trouble keeping track of appointments. I thought an Alexa might help. Willie loved the idea of being able to demand a song or the weather, although she was a bit nervous about identity theft.
“What if she hears me say my social security number?” Willie wanted to know.
“Do you routinely go around shouting your social security number?” I countered.
Surprisingly, my argument was not well received.
I spent the evening in Willie and Indy’s apartment, setting up Alexa and chatting with my parents. Once Alexa was up and running, Willie asked for the “Rocky” theme song.
Willie and Sylvester Stallone went to high school together. They were both in the school play. Willie was the lead. Sly was something that was not the lead. So, you know. Sly can take his Oscar and shove it because Willie was the mother***ing lead.
Indy asked Alexa to play a march. He’s a big fan of classical music. Alexa launched into Mozart’s Turkish March. Indy sat over his dessert, enjoying the rhythm of Wolfgang’s composition.
“Alexa, stop!” Willie yelled. “Play a SOUSA march!” She helpfully reminded Indy that he likes Sousa’s marches.
She whispered when she spoke. You know. So Alexa wouldn’t hear her tell Indy of his preference for Sousa’s marches, then steal her social security number.
As Sousa blared, my son texted me. It was a picture of yet another gruesomely cut sandwich. I cringed and showed my parents. In earnest, I described the day Don cut his sandwich so egregiously. I told them how, between the sandwich and my “Dirty Girl” column, Don now thinks I have a problem.
I poured my heart out to my parents. My protectors. My champions. My discourse raged on, illustrating yes, I do have a problem. The people I live with are slobs, cutting their sandwiches all willy-nilly. They don’t lay books on tables at ninety-degree angles. They don’t line up their shoes on the doormat.
My dissertation done, I looked at my parents, imploring them to understand and support me. Surely they see the grisly situation in which I live. My soulmate is a horizontal sandwich cutter. Worse, I’ve only just discovered his betrayal. Our children possess the same disturbing genome. My parents will have my back as I navigate the horror that now passes for my life.
Willie and Indy looked at each other. They looked at me. They turned back to each other.
“I think she’s expecting us to agree with her,” Willie told Indy.
Indy, for his part, couldn’t respond. He was doubled over, laughing too hard to speak. Hysterical laughter is not an easy thing to achieve when you have Parkinson’s disease. But I’m a neurosurgical nurse and that’s how I roll. I fixed his Parkinson’s without even trying.
Willie and Indy then went on to say everything Don had said. Between the sandwich cutting and “Dirty Girl” post, they think I’m a little unglued.
I told them that, as my parents, they’re supposed to agree with me.
They asked if, as my parents, they had made me this way.
Unequivocally, yes. Willie and Indy are cyclones. Whirling dervishes. They are like Pigpen, leaving chaos wherever they travel. Growing up, the clutter they are blind to agitated me. I compensated by making my spaces as neat as can be. In other words, I made my spaces NORMAL.
I say that with all love for Willie and Indy.
My parents – MY PARENTS – began to give me different sandwich-making scenarios. When I make peanut butter and jelly, do I put the peanut butter on one slice, the jelly on the other, then slap the bread together?
Um, no. Are you serious? The peanut butter and jelly and bread crumbs get all over the place when you do that. What a mess. Put the peanut butter on first, then the jelly on top like a regular person.
What about just peanut butter? Peanut butter on both slices, or just one?
What am I, a monster? One side. One side!!
How do they – all of them – not see how cutting your sandwich properly imposes order on your world? I feel like Rosemary in Rosemary’s Baby – the only one who can see that everyone is a witch.
David Carr, in his autobiographical The Night Of The Gun, tells the story of his war with addiction. A writer with The New York Times, Carr was so addicted to cocaine he eventually turned to injecting the drug.
Did not know you could do that.
His addiction created a trail of decimated relationships, like cockroaches killed by poison under the sink. In his sobriety, he set out to speak with those affected by his drug use. As he did so, he found his memories of drug-fueled encounters didn’t jive with the memories of those with whom he’d had those encounters.
It’s a great book, if you ever get the chance.
Inspired by Carr’s work – a desire for a different, perhaps more accurate perspective – I texted my mom and siblings. Was I this obsessive growing up? My memory is that I was, which leads me to believe I was born this way and am therefore right, and alright.
My sister, with whom I shared a bedroom, would have a reliable answer to my query. My recollection is perpetual battles between my cleanliness and her slovenliness. I would dump her messes on her bed, the intent being for her to sleep she’d have to finally – finally – put her stuff away.
Nope. She’d just shove it onto the floor, under the bed, then curl up and sleep. Completely unencumbered.
As if you’ve earned your sleep with a mess like that.
I can remember coming home from a three-week trip with school and knowing my sister had worn my clothes while I was gone. My closet was completely out of order.
I recall coming home from work one night and knowing my sister had used my face cream because it had been moved from its designated spot.
I routinely cleaned out our toy cabinet. Dusted my grandmother’s shelves. Tidied our summer beach rental. Organized my Trapper Keeper.
“Not really,” my sister texted in response to my question. “Maybe a little.”
Well. That’s a sister for you. She’s probably on everyone else’s side.
So we’re at a détente. My husband, children, parents on one side. Me on the other.
Guess whose side is neater?
That’s right. Because I’m the motherf***ing lead too.
I don’t know what I’m talking about, but I know I’m right.