always a Four.

Between my sophomore and junior years of high school, I went to a nerd camp. We stayed in college dorms, two people to a room. Prior to going, we had to fill out forms, answering basic questions about personal habits so that they could try and match us up with compatible roommates. I sent in my form late and as a result got paired with a girl that drove me a bit crazy by the end of the four week stay. I think it's safe for me to assume that I drove her a bit crazy, too.

One of the questions was about tidiness. It asked how neat you were, with a scale of one to five, one being next to godliness, five being Pig Pen. I thought hard about this question and decided that I was a Four, thinking that I could probably be a little messier, but I could be a lot neater. My roommate was a One, which was a source of tension between us. She had issues with my housekeeping habits, though I confess her cleanliness didn't bother me one bit.

When I was little, I was under the distinct impression that neatness came with age. After all, the people in my life who insisted on cleanliness were adults, and the other people my age also had to be told to clean their rooms or they wouldn't be allowed to have friends over. I was picking up a pair of jeans off my living room floor a couple of weeks ago when it occurred to me that if I was ever going to grow into cleanliness, I probably would have done that by now. If I had to fill out that questionnaire again, I still probably circle the number Four. I'll tell you a secret. When I was waitressing in college, my favorite thing about the work pants and shirt I used was that I could drop them on the floor after taking them off, stomp on them all day long, and then put them on the next morning without fear of wrinkles. This is not the behavior of a One.

I thought about my elementary school friends and realized that their idea of a clean room was different than mine. To ten-year-old me, a clean room meant that there wasn't crap all over the floor. Now, there was crap everywhere else - on top of the dresser or the desk or the bed. You couldn't see the surfaces of those objects, but you could see the carpet, and that was apparently what mattered. For some reason, having a clean room was all about how elevated the crap was. My friends, though, you could see their dressers. And their carpet. I'm pretty sure they weren't stuffing everything in the closet either, which I tried a couple of times. Where the heck was all their stuff? Hrmmm.

The realization that my score wasn't ever going to go up hit me kinda hard. While I accepted a long time ago that I wasn't a tidy person, I now have to accept that I will probably never be one, at least if my understanding of tidy people is correct. I'm under the impression that these people care enough about things being neat that they will make the effort to keep things that way. Sure, I would like for there not to be jeans in my living room floor, but not enough to not put them there in the first place. I just don't care, and I don't see that aspect of myself changing. I've just always felt like there were more important things to do. Sure, I could force myself to make an effort, but I get the feeling that it comes very naturally to some people. They want to make the bed the way that I want to lie in it, reading a book and eating ice cream. These people are very strange.

I might as well mention this fact, because you've all figured it out anyway: I did not grow up in a neat house. I don't think my mother really cared either, because the only way that I could get away with the Elevated Crap Theory of Cleanliness is if she accepted it, too. I'm embarrassing her by saying that, but I don't think she's arguing. She's already thought of where she would land on the godliness-to-Pig-Pen scale, and if she is anything higher than a Three, then she is kidding herself. Come down here with the Fours, Ma, we get to eat ice cream in bed!

Should neatness count? I don't feel like being a Four impairs my happiness in any way. The only time I mind it is when I know someone is coming over who will certainly think that jeans do not belong in the floor. And I make a sort of half-hearted effort, but I know that my house just ends up looking like the residence of a Four who is expecting company, which is EXACTLY what I am in that case. I am satisfied, because the floor is clear. I don't even notice the fact that there's still a lot of junk milling about on the kitchen table.

I had a classmate come over to work on a computer science project once in college. I did not expect him to come into my room, and so I hadn't even bothered to move the stuff from the floor to the dresser. But then we had to do something on my computer and he saw how a Four lived. He commented on it positively, rather than just pretend not to notice that he had to step over about three pairs of shoes, a pile of books, and my waitressing clothes. He said that he thought it was cool that everything did not have to be in its place. At the time, I thought he was just trying to put a positive spin on an embarrassing situation, but maybe he meant it. Maybe he too was a Four, and he resented having to submit to the standards of others. He thought I was being true to myself, rather than just being caught unprepared. Of course, he, uh, didn't shower as often as most people do.

I'm not advocating making your guests wade through a foot of debris when they come over. That makes people uncomfortable. I'm not even saying that I'm going to stop cleaning when I know company is coming. I might resent it, but frankly it's the only way my house gets cleaned. This whole entry has been me, talking myself through accepting that I am a Four and likely to stay that way. I've decided I'm okay with it.