The art of compromise as a control freak
I have spent most of my life daydreaming about living alone, unless of course I lived alone and then I daydreamed about having an automatic coffee maker that delivered to my bed.
Recently, I found a coffee maker that does just that and dishes too, but it only works if it is actually in the home most of the time. Thus, I had to adjust my strength-in-solitude policy (see also: fear of commitment and sharing the towel rack policy).
When you live alone, you can do whatever you darn well please. You can organize your coffee cups alphabetically, ban all forms of sugar as the food of the devil, and make your bed with the folds just-so. Because no one is around to question your methodology or your blatant OCD tendencies.
The absolute worst part about sharing space with another human being is that you actually have to think about why you do something a particular way. Then you must verbalize it in effective debate tactics if you want to keep doing it that way, lest they challenge your habits and, God forbid, try to show you a different way of doing something.
The very thought makes my toes curl.
I fold my towels in thirds and then thirds again. Why this is not controlled by state and federal legislation, I cannot understand. Nonetheless, it is the proper (and as far as I am concerned, only) way to fold a towel. Everything else is just lazy and stinks of poor linen/towel etiquette.
Imagine my horror then when I came home to discover my new coffee-making, dish-washing, and laundering appliance had folded the towels first in halves, then thirds. That complicates the whole folding ratio into a senseless pile of terry cloth. Cupboards are not even designed to handle half-folded towels. Mothers: please teach your sons these valuable rules so they too may thrive in happy relationships.
I took a deep breath, recognized I cannot control everything and that some things are just not that important. Then I carefully refolded the towels correctly and placed them in the cupboard. Because if you can’t change someone, you can at least follow them around and do everything the way you prefer it instead. Like a passive aggressive hero of home economics.
In some instances I feel emotionally mature enough to actually have a conversation about how something ought to be. It lasts for about the first sentence of the conversation.
“Can we please move the dog bed to this part of the room?”
The appropriate response, I imagine, is that there must be a good, well-founded reason that the dog bed would be better placed four inches to the right. There is probably a dog bed feng-shui rule that I am applying to this request, or at least the wisdom of interior dog bed design.
Needless to say, I was appalled when the response was, “Why?”
“Because I like it there,” was what I thought, but instead I rattled off a list of logical reasons why anyone in their right mind, or at least anyone who knew how to fold towels, would clearly see that the dog bed was most effective and useful in its purpose when placed appropriately. Four inches to the right.
My cohabiting cohort stared at me and blinked. But because he is not like me, because he has compassion for my apparent isms and a desire for togetherness that far exceeds my incessant need to control space, he just said, “Sure.”
Then he moved the bed and made me coffee. And I stopped refolding towels.