forks and spoons make me swoon
/Living with another person is about as easy as, well, living with yourself. Although when it comes to yourself, at least the odd quirks and assorted annoyances are to be expected.
With other people, however, it can be a bit of a surprise or even a shock to learn they don’t do everything the way you do, won’t do everything the way you do, don’t think it’s a good idea to do everything the way you do. And when you ask why, it’s one flimsy excuse after another just piled on.
“Why don’t you fold the towels in squares, not rectangles?” you might ask. “Who taught you to do it that way?”
As the philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre said decades ago, “Hell is other people.”
Certainly, not you.
What kind of music at what volume is acceptable? At what point does clean become dirty? Do toothbrushes belong in a cabinet or on a counter? How does one properly cut a mango? These are the questions that plague many mates.
Those poorly raised, badly misinformed, just-plain-wrong people can make you become a solitary lone wolf, a hermit in sync only with the rising and setting of the sun. Roommates can make you want to howl—too lazy, too always on their phones, too disheveled, too loud, too dumb.
Certainly, not you.
Ray once said, “At least when you die, they’ll say you had a clean, organized house.” Then he cackled to taunt me for wanting a simple thing like all the same foods on the same shelf in the refrigerator.
Why separate a dairy or antioxidant family for no good reason?
No, I wasn’t always this way.
When I was young, living at home, my room was a hazardous waste site, a landfill, a repository of all things crumpled and crusty. I had a secret ashtray under the bed, piles of scorned clothes dumped in corners, half-eaten Almond Joys sticking inside my night table. At any given time, I had an album, a radio, a hair dryer, a princess phone, a cheese melt, and a face steamer all going at once, while I studied.
It was all those quiet, organized types like Mom who made me cackle. Yes, hell was other people.
Yet as soon as I had my first apartment, the slob vanished like a teenager when it’s time to do the dishes. I became a clean freak, a Comet and Windex junkie, a no-smoking-allowed fanatic, the one who dictated to everyone how they should make their beds and scrub their tubs. I taught one roommate how to spritz a mirror, another how to spread the fringe on a carpet.
See, Mom, I changed. Grew up, I guess, plain and simple. The person I live with today might say I went backward.
“Does it really matter?” Ray asked when I traded a big spoon for a little one as I embarked on a bowl of hot soup. “I don’t like a big spoon,” I grunted as I marched to the drawer for a replacement. “Too much slurping.”
“Yes, yes,” he grumbled, “and you eat dinner with a big fork, not a little one.
And you prefer two napkins, one on your lap and one on the table, and you want the heat turned up because you like to strip down when you eat. And you want salad dressing on the side and let’s turn down the lights because bright lights mess with melatonin production at night and please no ice in my water, you know it gives me a headache, and really who wants to listen to the news while eating, it’s so bad for digestion.”
“Wow,” I said, beaming. “I think you’ve finally got it.”
“Now sit down,” he replied. “Dinner is served. It’s your favorite: food you don’t have to cook yourself.”
Heaven is other people, too.