My amazingly adorable three
year old granddaughter, Charley, loves to line things up. It is almost like it
is her job in life to make sure things are arranged in an orderly fashion. Anything
& everything needs to be precisely placed in a line.
She will take every block
out of the container & carefully set them in a long line on the carpet.
This is always done one at a time. And she will walk all the way around the
line of blocks to lay the next one in its proper place. It can take a fair
amount of time to exactly place each item when the line is eight feet long.
I walked in their house the
other day to find three rows of magazines, probably twenty in all, carefully lined
up in perfect rows. If we do a puzzle, she will line up each piece as she
removes it. Any toys with numerous parts will eventually be arranged in a
straight line with careful precision.
She received a set of six
small airplanes from the movie “Planes” for her birthday. The first thing she
did was start lining them up on the couch. When I reached to straighten one a
little, Charley said, “No, Gaga! Leave it!” She has her way of doing it &
that is the way it is going to be. It is a cute little idiosyncrasy that we
have all come to love & accept about her.
We just moved my dad up here
closer to us a few weeks ago. Circumstances all came together which made Allison’s
sister, Masha, available to care for my dad so she has moved in with him. Last
week she purchased an exercise device. As she sat on the floor to assemble it,
Masha took each part from the box setting it neatly on the floor, she looked at
me & said, “I feel like Charley.”
The next day as I was
organizing my dad’s kitchen cabinets, I suddenly realized something. I was
carefully lining up his glasses in the cupboard. The small ones on the right,
medium in the middle & large to the left – all in neat rows. Our cupboards
at home are arranged exactly that way with everything in its place.
As I thought about it I
discovered quite a few interesting facts about myself.
I had carefully placed the
liquid hand soap, sanitizer & lotion in a line on the sink with the pumps
all facing the same direction.
When I was eating a handful
of pretzel sticks at my dad’s, I purposely placed them all in a line on the
napkin.
Although I don’t mind a
little clutter & many things (my desk, for instance) may appear
disorganized & haphazard looking, I do know exactly where things are. But as
I continued to observe my various little peculiarities regarding placement of
things I found more examples.
I have a rack on the kitchen
wall that holds nine coffee mugs. Each mug has its own hook according to size
or color & I ALWAYS put them back the same way. When Lou empties the
dishwasher & puts my mugs in the “wrong” place, I compulsively change them
back.
When I was working at Stiles
in Travel, there was always a jar of M & Ms available. If I took a handful,
I invariable lined them up according to color then would proceed to eat them
one at a time keeping the rows even.
What suddenly dawned on me a
few days ago was – Oh…My…God…Charley must get this little quirk of precisely
lining things up from me! And I don't mind one little bit.
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