American Pie: Not Here, But There
Everything in John Merchant’s small world has a place, and there must be a place for everything.
So where is his trusty cooking fork? And is he suffering from juxtaphobia?
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One of the few things I’ve learned about myself that I’m sure about, is that everything in my small world must have a place, and there must be a place for everything. Having said that, I don’t know whether it’s a virtue or a vice. I suppose it all depends on who you ask. All I know is that if what I’m looking for isn’t where it’s supposed to be, then it might as well be on the moon.
There’s a drawer in my kitchen where I keep cooking utensils – a slotted spoon, a potato masher, kitchen scissors and the like. I don’t have a lot of gizmos, so it’s not as if the drawer in packed with three different can openers, four bottle openers, two gadgets nobody can figure out what use they have, and so on. Nevertheless, I can stare intently into the drawer, even move things about a bit, and still not see what I’m looking for.
The other day it was my trusty cooking fork. It’s just a big old table fork, and kind of ugly, but my best friend gave it me years ago, and now he’s dead, so the fork is special. I use it for turning bacon over in the fry pan, whisking the scrambled egg mix, and things like that. On this occasion, I was making curry, and I could see pieces of tomato in the sauce that were just a tad too large, so I needed the fork to mash them.
The curry was at a critical stage in the making, so I quickly abandoned my search and used a dinner fork instead. As soon as I could take a break from the curry, I urgently recommenced my search, fearing the fork might have accidentally been thrown out with the kitchen garbage. The first place I looked was the cutlery drawer, because sometimes the fork gets mixed up with the tableware. Not there!
Then I started looking in the most unlikely places, which is my way in these crises. Had I carried it with me into the garage and perhaps left it on my workbench, or perhaps it had fallen into my toolbox? Neither place gave it up. Did I take it with me on my last trip to the bathroom? Unlikely, but by now I was anxious and desperate.
I was so desperate in fact that when I didn’t find it in the bathroom, I broke down and asked my wife if she’d seen it, knowing full well that the first thing she would do is walk with measured tread over to the utensil drawer and find it. And that’s exactly what she did. As usual, she turned away afterwards, not saying a word, just rolling up her eyes. I hate that.
Early in our relationship, she was at my house one day preparing an evening meal while I was at work. She called me at my office to ask if I knew where a certain spice jar was located. It was too soon in our acquaintanceship for her to have discovered my dark secret, so after I explained, “It’s in the left-hand cupboard over the sink, in the middle of the third shelf,” there was a long silence. Then very faintly and hesitatingly, she said “Oh - I see - thank you,” and hung up the phone, obviously shaken that I was able to give such precise directions.
A few weeks later; by which time Sandra was spending more time at my house than hers; wanting her to feel comfortable, I told her to please treat my place as her own. Not long after, I returned from work one evening and immediately sensed there was something different about the living room. I took me just seconds to discover a houseplant had been moved. Though I knew I was being ridiculous, I simply had to move it back.
My juxtaphobia (my word for it) has really been tested since our first meeting some twenty-five years ago . In that time we have never owned less than two houses, or a house and a boat. To avoid having to cart our goods and chattels back and forth between visits, we set up house in whatever places we had at the time, including the boat, since we spend extended periods on it. So we have pots and pans, linens and tools, clothes and knick knacks wherever we hang our hats.
On one hand this is supremely convenient, but has its pitfalls. It seems that whenever I need a particular tool, or plan to wear a favorite shirt or pair of shoes, they’re always somewhere else. Since our places of residence are now 1300 miles apart, popping around for what I need is out of the question. But it’s not so much the disappointment of the revelation that irks me, it’s the hours I waste looking, convinced that what I need is here and not there.
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