Village Squire, 1975-10, Page 34I'm a mess...just ask
anyone who Knows me
BY KEITH ROULSTON
I'm a mess.
My wife tells me that quite regularly. My
staff at the office doesn't tell me outright, but
you can tell at the way they look in horror at
my desk piled high with paper that they're a
little disgusted with the boss. My mother, I'm
sure, wuuld shudder if she knew what a slob
had managed to escape from her tidy, if not
immaculate home.
I readily admit that neatness is not one of
my virtues. I'm a slob when it comes to
keeping things tidy. Not that I'm a litter bug
or anything. I've never knowingly thrown a
scrap of paper on the street, my wife will tell
you that. She'll quickly assert that I bring all
my junk home to clutter up her clean
livingroom.
If we ever go our separate ways it will most
likely be over my hoarding tactics. For a long
time I thought we were most incompatible
over the fact I always squeezed the toothpaste
tube from the end while she squeezed from
the middle. But I cured her of that habit.
She's a tougher case to crack however if she's
to reform my messiness.
Actually, it's not so much that I like clutter,
I'm as neat that way as the next guy. It's just
that I'm unable to make decisions, little ones
at least. The big decisions that effect our
whole future I can make with little hesitation.
It's the little ones that hurt.
At the office 1 get two zillion press releases
a day from eve-ybody in the world who thinks
the public i' just waiting to her their
message. Ninety per cent of this goes exactly
where it deserves immediately, the circular
file. But the other ten per cent causes
problems. I'll see something and think
"Hmm, that government report on the
breeding patterns of mosquitoes in northern
Manitoba just might come in handy one of
these days. You never know when you'll need
information on a thing like that," and I'll
throw it on one corner of the desk. On top of
that will go the Department of Agriculture
press release on the growing of kumquats in
Rosebud, Saskatchewan and on top of that
will go the Food Prices Review Board's
important study on the price of pantyhose in
Mac's Milk compared to Beckers. And soon
the desk is from corner to corner piled with
six inches of paper.
"Where'd you get all that junk" a visitor
may say.
"Junk," I reply. "that's no junk. That's
important research material."
Why don't I put it in a file, you ask? That IS
my file. In a fast 33 minutes I can find any
item you ask me for.
It's a lot the same at home. I'm a
newspaper and magazine freak. I get two
daily newspapers, everyday, a few others now
and then, several weeklies, and enough
magazines to keep paper stocks on the T.S.E.
riding high for years to come. My time for
32, VILLAGE SQUIRE/OCTOBER 1975
reading, however, is limited. So I'll get a
paper and say, "there's an interesting article
on page 153 I should read when I get time,"
and I'll set it aside for later perusal. Of course
with my short memory span I forget about the
article. The pile of newspapers keeps growing
and growing until we could have our own Boy
Scout paper drive if we had any Boy Scouts
Finally my wife gets fed up lays down the law
and orders the paper out.
I sit dutifully down and begin to go through
the papers to see what I wanted to save in
each.... at least for the first hour and a half.
Then I say to heck with the whole thing and
throw all the papers in the garbage,
forgetting all those articles I just had to save.
This, of course makes my wife joyous to see
that the pile sat there for all that time just to
be thrown out as they would have been if
she'd had her way two weeks earlier. If you
read my obituary one of these days it will
probably be because my distraught better
half threw my papers at me in a fit of pique,
and I suffocated under a ton of newsprint. A
fitting end you might say.
•
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246 Main St. West
PALMERSTON
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