Wednesday, March 1, 2017

ROTATING UNDERWEAR – and other weird stuff we do…



I’m sure the title pulled you in. Of course I could have done: ‘circulating panties’, ‘revolving briefs’, ‘juggling thongs’ or something similar, but I do have a bit of class (pronounced: ethics). Not to disappoint, I will tell you the tale of my ‘unmentionables’, as it’s a solid substantiated basis for some of those weird things we do. A lot of those things are done without spending much brain-energy, since we do them on auto-pilot, as in totally without thinking (I wonder what kind of auto-pilot an auto-pilot has!) You’ll no doubt acknowledge some of the weird stuff you do, after reading about my rotating underwear.

How you keep your underwear drawers organized, says a lot about you. Are you neat? Are you conscientious concerning rigid and systematized order? Or don’t you give a crap about what anybody can read about you from looking into your drawers?

The level of how clean you keep your car, also tells me a lot about you. If the inside of a car looks like a smaller version of the local refuse-dump, with so much trash around that you’ll need the help of a large sized bulldozer to find the passenger seat, I immediately assume that the car-owner’s home and work, as well as personal hygiene, cannot be far behind.

Back in the days interviewing prospective applicants, my final ‘test’ in some cases would be: ‘hey, let’s do lunch – use your car?’ So here I’d chatted away with a nicely well-suited-for-the-job young man, showered and shaved, precisely the employee I needed. Of course, applicants were never ready for the ‘your car’ bit, so in many cases body language and facial expressions (as in: ‘horror’) quickly told me what to expect. And ‘yes’ I did make several decisions to-hire-or-not-to-hire based on this measure. Having asked to see their undies drawers instead, would of course have been a tad awkward - don’t you think?

But let’s return to my drawers; I do my own laundry around here. I am the ultimate laundry folderer (not a real word...) my closet looks like perfection, if you really care about stuff like that. The solid colored T-Shirts to the left; T-Shirts with designs in the middle and the crispy white ones to the right; folded and neatly stacked with the same width, 9 inches if you really must know – looking clean and very organized.

As with my underwear, I place the newly laundered and folded clothes on the bottom of the stack, and retrieve from the top. By using this methodical way, I give equal wear and tear opportunity to all my unmentionables; rotating is the way to go. Makes a lot of sense, huh?

This is something I have done from I was old enough to do it, so it has become an automated habit, something my auto-pilot is in charge of. But at times I do get a giggle from what I do, as I think, in a way, that it’s silly and something I am absolutely never ever going to reveal to anybody else, at all; I mean, what would they think about me, huh? Being unfairly judged by the order of my secret drawers? Not going to happen.

But we are all in many ways in the same boat of auto-pilot habits. The daily shower is a good example. If you (please don’t) ask me to tell you how I shower, answering this without moving my body – at all, would be impossible for me to do; you should try it yourself. The daily movements under the spray, using soap and shampoo, the order in which we do that thing, are so in-grown, that I can do it in my sleep and often do; but I can’t tell you outside the shower-stall how I do it, without wriggling around while swinging my arms wildly.

I have a digital calendar on my PC that I live by. Same calendar shows up on my Kindle and iPhone. The calendar is filled with info and ‘things to do – things to remember’ beyond the call of duty – in cases way beyond. I’m not even going to tell you some of the extremes, because you will point fingers and laugh at me, and as I am a sensitive person that bruises easily, my therapist advises against exposing too much of Peter – especially my underwear, actually.

Anyway, the extreme items on my calendar, alongside birthdays, appointments and a slew of other basic stuff, are true helpers in my daily functionality. My theory, and it proves effective in practice as well, is that the more I write down, stuff I need to recall, the less I have to deal with between my ears. All I need to remember is to look in my calendar – and I have three places where to look, as in ‘seriously always available’.

On top of that, I have yet another calendar, besides the big family calendar in the kitchen. It’s a ‘real’ calendar lying on my desk in the office - to the right, if you really must know. It’s a weekly calendar and I (am embarrassed telling you this – kind of) fill every bloody day with the same nine items – every day, every week every month. These are items that to some extent are different from what’s on my digital calendars. 

Among the nine items, it says: writing, photo stuff, piano, fitness, read & learn, etc. I hand-write these nine items into the calendar every Sunday, starting a new week; and I write the same nine items for every single day of the week – seriously. For the most part I don’t get around doing all nine items every day, but I substantiate doing this somewhat pathetic routine with the fact that every time I write ‘writing’ I remind myself the importance of doing so – writing of any kind, because I enjoy doing that. ‘Fitness’ explains itself and I live by it, ‘read & learn’ is something I do every single day of the year, etc. So though it seems redundant to anybody else but me, as well as it should, I do find a huge benefit in this auto-pilot way of planning my days – my life, actually.

We all do stuff during our daily lives that might and should make us giggle a bit, when we really think about it. Some of the stuff could be negated or improved on, totally disregarded and/or discontinued and perhaps we could actually come up with brand new ways of doing those things a lot more efficiently. What I’m concerned, I seriously don’t think I’ll change any of my somewhat erratic ways of being organized, doesn’t matter how pathetic I really think some of those things are (yeah, I’m honest, too).

I’ll keep rotating my underwear in the name of equality. I’ll keep folding T-Shirts to perfection and to my very last breath and I will continue to enjoy (secretly, of course) the great satisfaction I get from ironing my clothes as well as my wife’s. Perhaps, as a 70-year older person I should have an excuse for doing this without adjustments, but the fact is that I have been doing this since I can remember – I started writing stuff in calendars when I was 7 - really. The old saying: ‘if it ain’t broke, why fix it…’ or something like that.

As far as I know, my undies have never complained. Of course, they might chat among themselves when I’m not around or in the shower or while I’m sleeping… that would make sense. But overall, I’m sure they like to be rotated – appreciating the equality of wear and tear at its very best…