Coming Unmoored

Living with someone, even temporarily, is definitely the quick way to discover differences in idiosyncrasies.

Case in point… I needed to do my laundry a few days ago and offered to do some of Charlie’s at the same time. When it came time to put it away I was puzzled to discover Charlie had three separate sock drawers. I couldn’t figure out why one human being needed three drawers for socks. But he did have a massive bureau he wasn’t sharing with someone else. I figured the socks had simply expanded to fill the available space.

Upon closer study, there appeared to be one drawer of black socks, one of tan, and one of white. So, I put the clean pairs of socks in their respective drawers and thought nothing more about it until the following morning… when I woke to Charlie in a mild panic to get to a meeting and completely incapable of understanding the devastation that had been wrought upon his sock drawers since the day before.

Apparently the actual system is this–there is a drawer for “work socks”, one for “casual socks”, and one for “slummin’ around socks”. Somehow, I had managed to put every pair of socks I had washed in the incorrect drawer.

Charlie has since tried to explain to me in great detail what constitutes each of the three categories of socks. He might as well be speaking Latvian to me, for all I understand him.

Now, I would like you to know that I am trainable to a reasonable degree when it comes to cohabiting in a relationship. You want the toilet paper to hang a particular direction on the role? Fine. You don’t want me to kill the DSL in the house by plugging a fax machine into the wrong jack? Cool. I’ll move the machine. You’d rather I not use your first edition Iron Man comic book as a coaster for my morning green tea? Whoops. Sorry ’bout that. Won’t happen again.

But I’m afraid I’m never going to be able to adapt to Charlie’s sock classification system. In the future, any clean socks of his are going ON TOP of the bureau and he can sort them appropriately to his heart’s content.

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