I'm A Little Anal Retentive

I've spent most of my weekend cleaning and purging and I can't begin to explain how good this feels. I've put a bunch of unneeded stuff up on Freecycle and most of it is already on its way to new good homes.

In the process of all this cleaning, I am reorganizing my dresser, which I do about once a season when I change my clothes over front spring/summer to fall/winter. As I finished reorganizing my underwear and socks drawer, I was reminded of a now funny college story (it wasn't funny then) and I see that as much as some things change over two decades, the more they truly stay the same.

During my sophomore year, I was a Resident Assistant in the freshman dorm with five other Resident Assistants. We were all very good friends and regularly hung out even when we weren't on duty. One of the perks of being a Resident Assistant was having a master key that would get us into any room in the entire dorm. Ideally, this key was for only emergency use or to let a student back into their room when they found themselves locked out. Sometimes, however, mischief ensued.

It was well-known that I was a little anal retentive about my room. It was always clean and I even normally made my bed, even though it was 6 feet off the ground and no one could see it. I simply did not like clutter or messiness.

My dresser was even hyper-organized. The first drawer contained nothing but underwear and socks. Both were organized by type and by color and everything was folded neatly. The socks were broken down into two piles - one for colors and the other for whites.

One afternoon, I returned to my room after a long day of classes to discover my closet door open and dresser drawers were hanging open (I kept my dresser in my closet). I certainly never left them in this state. When I pulled the top drawer completely open, I discovered that all my socks and underwear were no longer in their neat and organized piles, but were now all mismatched and strewn everywhere within the drawer (at least they were still in the correct drawer).

Immediately I knew the funny people behind this little prank - my good friends and fellow RAs. My friends thought this was pretty hilarious, although I didn't find it the least bit amusing.

As I organized my sock and underwear drawer into neat little color-coded, folded piles this afternoon, I had a good laugh remembering how upset I was over this prank and now find it pretty funny.

But I swear if anyone dares to rearrange my dresser today, I will not be responsible for the wrath you will endure.