If there is one bit of wisdom that I can impart about aging, it is this:
People don’t change as they age, they simply become more themselves.
It’s like a personality slowly condenses, like water evaporating from a boiling pot. Or, in the case of some people, milk slowly curdling. Quirks (or faults) that were mildly present at age 21 become the main event by 31. Perhaps they drop the artifice they were hiding behind. Perhaps they just stop caring. For instance, you can almost plot the course from angst to curmudgeon to bitter old asshole. Or, conversely, from giggly to ditzy to taking too many anti-depressants.
Of course, when I’m talking about myself, I use the term ‘becoming more comfortable in my skin’ or something that makes it sound like some miraculous transformation rather than the more colloquial ‘turning into a fruit loop’.
But regardless, once the cement of self has been set, there seems to be no turning back.
For instance, feet. You know how much I dislike feet. I used to just be grossed out by certain feet. Boy feet, for instance, of the type that paraded around in smelly tube socks and ancient Chuck Taylors. Then somewhere in my late teens to early twenties, I developed an actual aversion to any adult feet with the exception of girl feet that are obviously well-tended. Esteban’s feet horrified me, but I could still, for instance, wear his clean socks in an emergency. I didn’t go apoplectic if he touched me with his bare feet (unless his Toenails of Death drew long bloody furrows into my ankles). Now, however, I am squicked by even the nicest of feet. I don’t want to touch them. I don’t want to see them. In fact, my own feet gross me out if they are not right out of the shower. I started to hyperventilate while getting a pedicure at the sight of the feet of the woman in the chair next to me and the fact that they were shaving off foot skin and it was flying EVERYWHERE and then I had to walk on little paper sandal things that were hardly santitary across this minefield of discarded foot flesh. Actually, that is probably understandable, but in the pool the other day, Ward’s feet came within three feet of my face and I actually paddled the floatie away as though I were being pursued by a questionable Baby Ruth-esque brown log. And he’d been in the pool for several hours, so they were obviously clean feet. There’s no rationalizing with my brain. It just prefers that people keep their feet in their shoes, thank you very much.
Also, it really bugs me if the toilet paper comes over the top of the roll rather than from below. I can deal with it in public restrooms and the like, but in my own house? Under the roll. However, Esteban is an Over The Roll kind of guy.
I didn’t learn this until recently because for the first seven years of our cohabitation, he never actually replaced a roll of toilet paper. I made him promise to do it, in return for only buying Northern Quilted which is something he feels quite strongly about (I actually prefer Charmin because it reminds me of my great grandmother, but whatever). So’ now there the toilet paper is replaced, unless he’s feeling really lazy and leaves the mysterious four squares on the cardboard tube.
Note to singletons and young couples: You know that rule about ‘Don’t Sweat The Little Stuff’ that Dear Abby used to go on about? Let me tell you something’ the Big Stuff probably got sorted out by the time that you move in together. The Little Stuff is all that is left. The divorce rate would be much lower if people practiced a little more bathroom diplomacy. Thus ends Relationships According To Bix.
I suspect that he doesn’t consciously thinks about which way the toilet roll should hang, but it must be habit from his days with Ward and June. And one day I told him how much it bugs me and he promised to do it the correct and proper way from then on. And then he promptly didn’t. So then I offered some auxiliary marital acts in exchange for his willing participation in my psychosis. And we’ve since had 99% compliance.
Last week, we hit the 1%. Unfortunately, it coincided with my recent purchase of a pack of Triple Roll Northern. It shouldn’t bother me. It really shouldn’t. But each time I’m in there, the roll mocking me, the end hanging somewhere behind the roll, hard to grasp, clinging to itself. Each time, I write a treatise in my head, to explain to the world why the toilet paper coming from underneath the roll is the proper way to hang it. Because gravity works with you. Because it just looks nicer. Because I like it that way.
You know, maybe I feel so strongly about it because it was actually the first thing on which I developed an opinion. I remember having a discussion with my mother when I was three about why people hung the toilet paper differently, and then ended the conversation ‘I think I like it hanging against the wall.’ And there it was. The birth of a toilet paper diva.
Thus, all weekend, I’ve been fighting with myself to not switch the roll around. Because that’s just giving into the obsession. However, a triple roll, by its very nature, lasts almost as long as Christina Aguilera’s career. I find myself using extraneous amounts of toilet paper. For everything. I used toilet paper to take off my makeup. I used toilet paper to clean the faucet. I even tore off a square to use as a bookmark in my latest bathroom read (The Bad Girl’s Guide to Getting What You Want, which comes with a handy waterproof cover, as though it were destined for bathroom reading). I stopped just short of sentencing Esteban to use up improperly rolled toilet paper on his numerous trips to the bathroom by making chili with extra beans.
And I just don’t know what to make of these growing compulsions. Do I have full blown OCD to look forward to in my aging years? Will someone use this entry as a resource for their psychological profile when I am committed? Will I someday get arrested when I ram some guy throwing his cigarette butt out the window of his car, like the entire world was his damn ashtray? Will my other little quirks wrap themselves as indelibly into my personality until I become that cat woman who talks to herself and has mazes of twenty-year-old magazines in her house? It boggles the mind.
But today’ There’s a nice lovely fresh roll hanging in the bathroom. Hung by myself. The right way.
Today is a beautiful day.
