On Mess

*part of an ongoing series on personal attachments to “mess”

I find great solace in the organization of forms.  I hold onto the superstition that if I can bring order to some material form, I’d have brought order to some part of myself.

I had been, from a very young age, what most adults, teachers especially, were quick to label as “messy”.  During my career as a first grader, I recall a formative afternoon in which, to my great surprise,  the teacher asked me to stay in the classroom after the last bell of the school day had rung.  Even more to my surprise was when my mother then stepped into the now empty classroom to greet the teacher and me, for my mother never picked me up from school; it was always my grandparents who did.  She was asked to sit beside me at my designated desk as the teacher explained to her what a mess I was.  My books and papers were stacked and crammed all over the place, and my pens and markers were strewn all over.  I thought my mess was lovely- a medley of color and form.  But to them, it was a nightmare.

the writer as a child.

The more pressing problem that the teacher wished to address, however, was that the entire surface of my desk had been covered in what she referred to as “scribbles”.  I of course, saw it as a carefully collected mix of drawings, class notes, and tic-tac-toe games, all executed in the medium of pencil, which to me, added decoration to the otherwise, sad blonde melamine desk.  The teacher, convinced that the sight only meant trouble, asked me to wet a wad of paper towels and wipe off the mess as she and my mother looked on.

If it was meant to be a form of punishment, or an attempt to embarrass me, the incident seemed to have ultimately created the opposite effect.  I took the opportunity of having the full attention of two adults who were all too familiar with the act of effectively wiping down a surface, to display a totally pathetic pantomime of what it looks like to clean.  Taking the wet wad in my hands, I placed it onto the surface, and applying as little pressure as possible shifted the wad around from one end of the desk to the other.  As the puddle of grey pencil water formed, I paid no concern of its rapid race to the ends of the desk, and let it spill over, now extending the puddle of grey’s reign to the floor.  My mother jumped up instinctively to grab more paper towels, but the teacher gestured her not to.  This mess was wholly to be cleaned up by me.  And yet, seeing that the mess I was initially asked to clean had now grown, I remained unfazed.  I continued with my sad display of cleaning, taking all the time in the world to push the wet wad of paper towels from one end of the desk to the other.  I had no place to be.  No troubles to address.  My teacher, I’m sure, had things to do.  My mother, I’m sure had places to be.  But not I.  I had all the time in the world to move the wet wad of paper towels from one end of the desk to the other.  I could stay here all night, all the next day, and the day after pushing this wet wad of paper towels, if that is what they desired.  I will drag this process out until they realize what a mistake this was: to attempt to make me reform.

The teacher tried to speed the matter along by pointing out spots that I had “missed”.  I took this yet as another opportunity to drag out what had now become an event, even longer.  I began to concentrate my wet wad pushing on one of the areas she pointed out, moving the mass back and forth with my hand in a waving motion, as I kept my wrist still,  just short of batting it like a kitten would with a ball of yarn.  A few more minutes of this passed, and finally, the teacher stood up, saying something that signaled the end of the affair, and reiterated the lesson that I was supposed to have learned- as if saying it somehow meant that I had learned it, and covered up the true nature of what had just taken place.  She shook my mother’s hand kindly, patted me on the back, and saw us out the room.  

I was surprised that the session had ended so soon.  I had grand plans to stay at that desk until both my teacher and mother died.  What’s more, the desk wasn’t even clean.  Though the doodles were no longer discernible, the surface had transformed into a grey homage to Rothko, ultimately, more to my taste, but certainly, I thought, not how the teacher thought the intervention would go.  The desks surrounding mine were all the same hue of a bright butterscotch, and the grey sheen over my desk stood out like a fingernail overrun by fungus on a hand of otherwise perfectly healthy nails.

I won, I thought.  My mess and I had won.  And it was from that day forward, I began to worship in the cult of mess, and adore the burdens it entailed.