September 30, 2006
After years of watching people and observing life, I have learned a simple truth: we either adore chocolate ice cream or we love vanilla.
Mercifully, there is room for both kinds of ice cream and both kinds of people in our lives.
To chocolate lovers, it is incomprehensible that someone would actually choose vanilla over chocolate ice cream.
To me, it is just as unbelievable that one would choose the chocolate half of a wedding cake over the luscious white half. Certainly, wedding cake is a wedding cake only if it is white.
So, there you go.
And, nowhere are these differences more pronounced than with couples.
A notable amount of couples are total, unabashed polar opposites.
Take living with an “underwear folder” for example.
To a number of persons, folding underwear and putting it carefully away in the dresser is paramount to living an orderly, happy life.
Please, do not look in my bureau drawers, but it is OK to check out my husband’s. His underwear is folded.
I toss towels and washcloths into a drawer without losing any sleep over the fact that they are not folded while he stays up until midnight religiously folding them.
If you would happen to stop by our kitchen, you might find that the “underwear folder” has to follow a recipe to a “T”, or the earth might certainly come to an end.
On the other hand, I am more likely to do my Rachel Ray gourmet impression and pour ingredients into a bowl and count, “One, two, three. Ok, that’s about a cup. Close enough.”
The differences between polar opposites also emerge when a couple has to decide who goes on the kiddos’ school field trips.
Are you the parent (or grandparent) who volunteers for every school field trip in order to explore cold, damp caves inhabited by bats, herd kids through boring museums, dye Easter eggs or make graham cracker gingerbread houses, clean up sticky messes, or chaperone athletic or band trips that embark at 3 a.m. in the rain?
Or, are you the one who prefers not to miss work, stay dry, and shun riding on school buses with noisy kids who almost always have colds?
As I said, you are either one or the other, and it has absolutely nothing to do with whether you are the Mom or Dad.
If one person says I have a “couple” of questions, that could mean anywhere from two to 17 questions to him or her.
To another, a “couple” of questions mean two.
Period.
Making a bed must be done every day, and dishes should be washed before one ever leaves the house. Right?
Do not even ask me where I am on those issues, although I imagine you can guess.
Opening Christmas presents—never, ever peek!
This is written somewhere, I am sure. Surprise must be preserved at all costs for people like me.
Reading the end of a novel first—well, that is OK in my book, but to some it is sacrosanct. By the way, reading the last chapter first cannot possibly be the same as peeking in Christmas presents, can it?
Then, of course, you may wonder, “What about car care?”
To some, one must not touch clean, shiny cars without gloves; no fingerprints on the windows, please.
To others, our automobiles are convenience stores on wheels where one can eat, drink, spill, drop crumbs, store food and over-the-counter meds, and watch movies.
Do not look in some folks’ closets for fear of fainting.
Other closets are organized with a type of color-coded clothes hanger Dewey decimal system.
I have no idea what it is or how it works, but I have witnessed such a sight.
These types also arrange white shirts together, blue shirts together, and keep work shirts at the very end of the closet hidden tastefully out of sight. Shoes are polished and sit in perfect rows.
My grandmother used to comment about these stark differences between people. “That is why we have chocolate and vanilla ice cream. It takes all kinds,” she would say.
I do not stick to recipes, I generalize. I love school field trips, never open Christmas presents early, will read the end of a book first, make a bed occasionally, and have a decently organized closet but cluttered dresser drawers. My car is a mess, but my dishes are clean.
Maybe that is why I order strawberry ice cream.
Was I pontificating about only two kinds of ice cream earlier?
Surely not.
