Memoir--Memoir
by Tina Li
Red. Chew once on the right, once on the left, and swallow. Orange. Repeat process. Continue until I reach purple and repeat process. These were very simple operations and I didn’t understand why more people didn’t follow. Eating skittles required concentration and deliberate maneuvers. As an eleven year-old, I was very particular about the way I conducted my life. Not just with candy, but with everyday occurrences such as the way I brushed my teeth or how many times each foot appeared in my peripheral vision while walking. I was never officially diagnosed with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder but, thinking back, if I had gone to a professional, the diagnosis would have been: crazy. I can still list all seventeen steps to brushing my teeth (a twice daily process, taking no more or less than 180 seconds).
My afterschool ritual was always consistent. I sat down at the easternmost corner of the couch (I think my indentation might still be there), sipped from a glass of milk, and carefully placed the first skittle on my tongue. My face would then pucker from the taste. I’m not sure why I did that everyday, but it became customary. I turned on the television and watched whatever was playing. It was often too quiet to hear and I would have no idea what was going on, so I would set the volume control up two bars, and then back down two, ultimately getting nowhere. Up four… down four…. Watching TV or listening to the radio was like constantly creating volume waves, “and the weather along the coast will be sixty degrees tomorrow afternoon with a slight chance of brief showers…”
Fortunately, I didn’t have to wash my hands every five minutes nor was I compelled to slam the cabinet twelve times to ensure the safety of the nation, but everything, everything had to be equal. If I rubbed my left eye, I would then naturally rub my right, applying the same amount of pressure. Sometimes I would try to resist the temptation by sitting on my hands or biting my nails but, sooner or later, my hand would stealthily approach my face, like Jaws, waiting to strike. I was usually good at hiding these quirks, or so I thought. When caught doing something odd, I would have to think up half-assed reasons why I was, for example, fiddling with the volume on Telemundo.
“Like I always say, if you put in the effort, you do an amazing job.” My mom was thanking me for finally cleaning the desk in the family room.
“Yeah. Can you pass me the cereal?”
“Here. The desk looks great. I can’t seem to find the water bill though. I was going to mail that today.” Uh oh. The desk, undoubtedly, looked clean and organized, but if you wanted me to look for something that was carelessly crammed into the drawer, you might want to avert your eyes. Things can get ugly.
“Um, I’ll let you know if I see it. Can you pass me the milk?”
“Mhm. Thanks. Also, I can’t find my silver pen…” Crap. I know exactly where that is. In the back left corner of the bottom drawer.
“Uhh… can you pass me the cereal?”
“Didn’t I just…” The sound of Beethoven’s Fifth interrupts her. “Where’s the phone?”
My mom isn’t usually home in the middle of the day. She works a lot, leaving me free to be neurotic while my grandfather naps on the couch. I actually feel pretty full and don’t really want to pour more cereal into my leftover milk, but I can’t help it. I can never get the cereal-to-milk proportion right.
Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t just snap out of my need for organization; the desk was just particularly monstrous to clean. Every two months or so, I would empty it of its contents, vacuum everywhere to remove all traces of cookie crumbs and dust bunnies, and dispose of everything that had lost its value since the last time I had decided to clean. Then, I would arrange all of my school supplies in the top left drawer, my notebooks and old magazines in the drawer below that, and my CDs in the bottom right drawer. By the time that had been done, I would have lost my desire to clean. Anything left over (including used coloring books, loose construction paper, and all the junk I couldn’t bear to throw away) would sit on top of the desk for three or four days. The only thing worse than a perfectionist cleaner is one that is also a packrat. After approximately a week of promising my mom that I would finish the job, I would finally shove everything back into the drawers. My philosophy was that if something looked good on the outside, people would forgive it for being a mess on the inside.
* * *
My cell phone tells me it is 2:30 in the morning. My eyes are so tired that it hurts to blink. Why the hell am I still awake? I’m aligning all of my pen caps so that the metal clips point to the words on the pen. Check. Check. Check. I’m putting everything in its rightful place in my backpack. Blue highlighter. Green highlighter. Blue pen. Green pen. I have to make sure that I have my pencil and my eraser. Wait, oh my God! Where’s my eraser? I can’t use the eraser that comes with my pencil. It’s a pet peeve of mine that stems from using cheap mechanical pencils – when the eraser runs out, it’s impossible to refill the lead. If anyone uses the eraser on my pencil – not just any pencil, my Pentel 0.5 side-click mechanical pencil – I will look at them like they just kicked my paraplegic dog. And I don’t even have a dog. This sort of “incidence,” as I tend to call them, has occurred three times, once involving one of my best friends.
“AHH!”
“What?! What?!” she demanded, dropping my pencil in shock.
“Serena! You… you used my eraser!”
I often get looks from strangers that catch me doing something out of the ordinary, like glancing down at my feet with every other step, making sure that I see my left foot the same number of times I see my right. I had never gotten this look from a friend before. I tried to laugh it off.
“It’s dumb, I know. I just don’t like people using my eraser.”
“Sorry…” she said in the tone that she assumes when homeless people yell at her.
That day, I went home and emptied my desk. When my mom came home, she found paper, books, pencils, broken toys, and all sorts of random junk strewn about the floor. She didn’t ground me. She didn’t even say anything. Little by little, I put things back in the desk. I put my school supplies in the top left drawer. The next day, I put my notebooks and old magazines in the drawer below that. A couple of days later, I arranged my CDs in the bottom right drawer. Everything else was left in a pile on the desktop.
* * *
“This is the third day in a row that you haven’t shown me any math homework,” Mr. Harmon muttered disappointedly without even glancing at the chart. He looked at me as if to say, “You fail,” or more accurately, “You’re failing.”
“Oh,” I replied, mildly annoyed that he had noticed. “Yeah…” It’s not that I didn’t understand how to find the equation of an ellipse; high school algebra isn’t exactly rocket science. I even dutifully carried my math book home everyday, just to leave it lying under my backpack. The choice between finding the focus of the hyperbola and falling asleep sprawled out on the couch was not difficult and I unfailingly acted on that indifference to homework.
I have to admit that I was not completely remorseful. I was sleeping more at night, not worrying about the next day’s assignments. I became a calmer and more relaxed person. That is, until the first semester report cards were sent home.
“Tina!” I froze. My mother’s anger was clear in the way she said my name. I tried to get home early everyday that week just to beat the mailman. I guess I failed that too. The whole semester seemed to flash before my eyes – as it had in real life. There wasn’t much to relive: eat, go to school, sleep, repeat.
“TINA! Get down here!” My mom lectured me for what seemed like hours. I had never received such poor grades before. In keeping with my apathetic behavior, my math grade quickly sunk to the nadir of my entire high school career.
I began working harder in school. I did the homework – most of the time – and paid attention in class. I realized that I had gone from one mania to another. Perfection. Apathy.
* * *
I wish I could say that I found a balance between the two, but years later I’m still struggling. I still align my pen caps and straighten desks when I enter the classroom. I also procrastinate and turn in assignments ridiculously late. Currently, my desk is not in remarkable condition. Junk mail and old papers litter the desktop. Three drawers of my desk are ridiculously neat. Books are stacked in order of size. Pens are arranged in order of color. The contents of the fourth are too incriminating to mention.