Growing Up the Neat Way

First and foremost, let me begin by stating that I am an unrepentant slob; always have been, always will be. I shouldn’t be this way, not after growing up in the white glove inspection household of my parents and attending military school for many years, but I am. Strangely though, I’m not always a slob; outside of my own home, I am one of the neatest, most organized people you will ever meet, and while sloppy at home, I’m still organized; I actually know where everything is in those mounds of paper and books that envelop my entire home office. Harking back to one of the oldest lines ever uttered by a parent, it’s my house and it’s my rules.

It wasn’t always like this of course. Once upon a time, I lived in a different house and under vastly different rules. My mother was, beyond a doubt, the most neurotic neat freak there ever was. A smudge on the refrigerator would have her get out the bucket and mop brigade to clean the entire house. Growing up in my parents’ home was like growing up in a living museum, and it certainly was. We were one of those families that had the showplace living room; the kind that no one was allowed to use, ever, under any circumstances. We had those horrible plastic covers on the couch and the drapes; antiques and artwork everywhere. One step into that room and the wrath incurred from my mother would be like having the flaming sword of God descending on you. I think that, perhaps, God may just have been a bit more forgiving. If you cleaned up any mess that you had made, it was imperfect and she had to reclean it herself. She would clean before the cleaning lady came and after she left. If toys were left on the floor of my room, I might as well have thrown them out myself. Even trying to keep my mess hidden and locked away in my bedroom was a failure. My mother was better at picking the lock on my bedroom door than a professional thief could have been. But what about my father, you may well ask. Dad was something else alright., he was a secret slob, one who’s many years of military training helped him in the arts of camouflage and subterfuge. My father had a secret stash of a pack rat’s nest hidden in the apartment above the garage; strictly man turf that my mother would not enter.

My father, the general, was almost kind of sort of a laid back guy, with the rod of military discipline shoved straight up his kiester. You would never imagine that outside of his job, he couldn’t even organize an expedition to the fridge for a midnight snack. Responsibilities? Bill payment? Forget it. Had that been left to my father, we would have lived as Neanderthals. Perhaps I’m being a bit unfair with my father. Dad was a highly decorated and terribly wounded veteran of World War II. Some of the things that poor man had been through and that had steeled his soul… he deserved whatever it is he wanted. The Air Force may have kept him around but it was more, I think, that they felt they owed him something. This was a man that had been through the veritable fires of hell and had returned, against all odds and he deserved a little slack, but jumping jehosophat, that man couldn’t bring himself to throw anything away. When I cleaned out his office after he passed away, I threw enough junk away to start up my own landfill; the junk seemed to be more treasured than the box of memories and honors that he had hidden away. Dad wasn’t going to be neat unless he was absolutely force to be, and while that may have been true in the main house, he was free to be a secret slob anywhere else.

And while I’m on the subject of secret slobs, it brings me to my tenure in military school; another home of enforced cleanliness and order. However, if you knew how to game the system, and I did, you could be a secret slob hidden under the very thin veil of neatness. For example, there was my footlocker, subjected to daily inspections. Everything in the upper layer of the footlocker was gathered in a tray and was always kept very neat and clean, except, well, don’t lift up the tray. Ceiling tiles above the bunk beds would hold all kinds of junk, and so would the locked dress uniform cabinet that I was expert at breaking into. In retrospect, I probably put more time and effort into hiding my messes than I would have spent just cleaning them up.

All in all, I would have to say that it was either the forced cleanliness and order or some kind of weird genetic mutation that has turned me into the slob that I am today. It certainly wasn’t hereditary. My sister and my brother both seem to have been bitten by the clean bug, although I do suspect that my brother is a secret slob just like my father was. It’s not that I don’t appreciate neatness, I just have more important things to do with my time.