We are Normal, and We want our Freedom
My girlfriend has been here for a week now, and things are just starting to get "settled," by which I mean I can envision, with a bit of squinting and liberal use of imagination, a slightly less chaotic domestic future just on the horizon. We're both relatively eccentric, used to a more or less "bohemian lifestyle." (OK, I'm probably a bit more e., used to more of a b.l. than she is...) You have to sacrifice a measure of your cherished slovenly elegance and time-honored eccentricity in order to establish a more or less functional household, even if your standards for functionality are pretty low. We've been calling this process "normal-ification." It's amazing how easy it can be.
I almost hate to admit it, but normal people have the right idea about quite a few things. For example, I have a kitchen with a table in it. For the last eight years or so, this table has functioned as a storage shelf. Like the floor, only elevated. It turns out, if you clear all the stuff off of the table, you can actually eat meals on it, just like normal people. You have to get some plates and forks, that sort of thing; you also have to get some food, which we have done-- if you look in the refrigerator, it almost looks as though someone actually lives here. (This is still enough of a novelty that I find myself looking in the fridge just for the hell of it, with the same sense of wonder I imagine people must have experienced when they saw color television for the first time.) There you have the normal-ification process. Each rediscovered secret leads to a host of pre-requisites, further requirements, and unexpected rewards. Of course, these secrets are well-known and taken for granted by normal people everywhere. But this is my first time. It's all news to me. If we can keep it up, we may be entirely normal before the year's out. Well, maybe not. But it's remotely possible.
Even ordinary things manage to become extremely complicated once you add a girl into the equation. In my disordered bachelor past, laundry was a more or less bi-annual affair. I knew that would have to change. But I wasn't quite prepared for the apartment-transformative New World Order. I thought I knew laundry, but now I realize: it's laundry's illusions I recall, and I really don't know laundry at all. It looks a bit like the set of M*A*S*H around here. I think that's normal. It is, isn't it?
Anyway, I'm having way too much fun to worry much about blogging. But to all the kind folks who noticed the recent unbearable lightness of posting on this blog and wrote to ask if I was "OK," thanks. I'm OK. Focusing on Important Matters, though, as you can see.
Posted by Dr. Frank at March 22, 2002 11:13 PM | TrackBack