I’ve always been organized, even as a teenager fresh out of the house I always had the cleanest apartment. Never thought much about it, think I was just raised that way. Over time I’ve noticed I’m getting a little more particular about things. Within a year of us getting married my wife was not working and she was raising the kids while I was working and going to school. I remember how I was almost walking behind my babies and reorganizing there toys into rows. I would get up early and organize the house before anybody got up. I always thought I was just being helpful. I think it started with the kids toys. Then it moved to the kitchen. For some reason I liked everything in rows, labels faced forward and everything separated, you know pee’s with pee’s…not like a can of corn in there. I always did it, I never asked my wife to do it. When she saw me organizing the cans she would usually just say something like, really? It wasn’t so much that they had to be in rows, I just liked things separated and organized. After the first year or so of marriage my wife quit putting away the groceries. For some reason it irritated her that I would go back behind her and organize them, remember I never asked her too. Apparently that doesn’t matter. By the second year of marriage she stopped doing the major grocery shopping all together. We had a grocery store like Winco where you bagged your own groceries, there is a system to this, you can’t just start bagging your groceries without a system. I found out she had a hard time adjusting to this system even though I tried to teach her. All I’m saying is if you bag all your canned foods together it’s so much easier, the same with bunching together frozen foods, cereals etc, I think you get the point. She didn’t get the point. So I took over all the major grocery shopping. It seemed like such a simple system, hardly anything to argue about, I actually think she spent more time complaining about the system than it would have taken her to read the instructions I prepared for her. I had them down to just 2 pages with Bullet points in bold to make it very easy to understand. I finally had the instructions laminated because she wasn’t very good at keeping them handy for easy use and referral at the checkout stand. For some reason she kept losing them. I remember, one time she said they went through the washer another time they blew out the window on the way to the grocery store and I can’t even remember how many times she said the dog ate them, which was funny because our dog never came inside the house. When our kids were young they would go into the kitchen cabinets and move stuff around. I spent hours working with them, showing them how to match like type cans together and how to set up them up in rows. It seemed to work very well for awhile. But, every few days I would look and they were all mixed up again. I only found out years later that my wife, my loving caring beautiful wife was taking every opportunity when I wasn’t there to teach them to mix them all up. She has never admitted to this, it was the kids as they got older who shared that little gem with me. Most all of this came to light just last month when my daughter now 22 was in my shop, which by the way looks like my kitchen. My shop is 24 x 72 feet and if you were to go in there, find something and come back outside you could ask me where that item is I could walk straight to it, every time. For years the kids knew I was a little particular about my shop, I say particular they saw borderline anal. I like my cans lined up, everything has a place, not just lined up but separated into, oil cans, spray paint etc. I’ve explained my shop system to my wife for years, she seems to think since I organize her kitchen, it is really her kitchen that she can come into my shop and move stuff around. I think she does it even when she doesn’t need anything. Sometimes my wife and I are the only ones at home, and her answer that mice are moving stuff around and knocking it over only works some of the time with me. Like I would ever let mice in my shop. I’m still having a hard time believing a possum moved my leaf blower off a table and onto the ground. Ok, she did show me a youtube video where a possum unlocked a door went into a kitchen opened the fridge, got some food and shut the fridge when he was done. I’m just not so sure, I’m still investigating that one. This is not even close to being acceptable. She isn’t in my shop every day as I am, and I’m pretty sure I’m not off base in saying If she can’t follow the rules of the shop, she needs to stay out. It wasn’t like she didn’t know the rules, I made them easy to understand in the email I sent her. I also posted them outside the shop door so there was little confusion. I may not be the smartest ……but unlike the grocery shopping notes that seemed to keep disappearing, I can put a puzzle together. Funny thing, my wife tells me she understands the rules but when I try to quiz her on say what’s rule # 3 for when you’re in my shop she finds ways of not answering me. She’ll even change the subject when I ask her what should you do if you make a mess, It’s clearly defined in section 4 of the rules, she knows that. We were at a wedding a few months ago and when I was trying to talk to her about this she just kept telling me to be quite. I don’t think there’s ever a “good” time to talk to her about it. Back to my daughter, she’s 22 now and she’s an unusual girl. She does a lot of stuff Boy’s do, hunts, works on her car and likes to just hang out in the shop with friends. That is what a shops for, a place to meet, share stories around the woodstove and card games are always fun. Then one night I caught her, she didn’t see me catch her. She reached way in back on one of my shelves and moved a can about an inch to the right. I couldn’t believe what I saw. So I just kept quiet and watched everybody over the next few hours. What I saw was shocking, I saw 2 of her friends just casually move stuff around also. Most people wouldn’t have even noticed. At this point I’m ready to blow, but I just let it go. Understand what they moved was something unimportant to them, it wasn’t like they were using it or reading or looking at it for any purpose other than to move it. The next day I was in the house and everybody was there, all my kids my wife and a few of my daughters friends. It was like someone opened the floodgates, it started with laughter from everyone in the house and turned into a confession session. Not so much a confession session as a bragging session. All I said was why did you move that can last night? You remember I told you she moved a can an inch or so from where it was, just wanted to make sure you understood how serious this was. One by one sometimes talking over each other I heard that my loving wife and children for years, maybe for 20 years had been doing this to me. For 30 minutes I heard about my daughter moving things sometimes just inches to see how long it would take me to figure it out. I heard that my son for almost a week straight was mixing up my spray paint cans so that the colors were not grouped together, I remembered that one very clearly, seriously who does this? It was always just 1 or 2 things moved, nothing obvious. Apparently then they would say, as they snuck around discussing what was next between themselves, Dad found that one in under a day or that one took him several days. It went so much farther than this, remember my daughters friends, apparently everyone liked to play this game, so much for a man’s shop being sacred. Even my Boy’s friends had done this over the years, talk about betrayal. I always knew something, you expect something after a party or a card game it’s just the way it is. I knew something funny was going on, there were things that got moved that you had to use a ladder for. One time I found a cigarette up in the rafters which are over 12 feet high! They even went as far as to open and break the seal on an oil can and then just close it back up. They went on to tell me for years they have been doing this. One little thing at a time, never doing too much at once as to not disclose this never ending game they were playing on me. It was hard to understand everything they were telling me as I felt like I was in a game of dodge ball with everybody focusing on me, it was also hard to understand everybody when they were laughing so hard. I must admit I thought it was funny, actually relieved in a way to know I wasn’t losing my mind. I’m not saying I won’t let them in my shop again, but there is a new lock and I know exactly what to say when they ask for the key, I’m sorry, but I think I lost it…for some reason it isn’t where I left it. 