The wisdom of "They"

We all know “they”. “They” are the ones that hold the nugget of wisdom humanity has learned from generations of experience. Over time I have discovered that “they” have much wisdom and an equal amount of silliness. However recently a personal insight has lead me to believe there may be some truth in a previous “they-ism” I had discarded as nonsense.

“They” say that children will marry their parents. A son will marry his mother, a daughter their father.  I had always considered this hogwash, as the cute little 18 year old that turned my eye way back in Grade 13 was nothing like my mother. Or so I thought.

This year my wife adopted a page from my mother’s book. She has decided to use a different wrapping paper for each child. This way the children will not be able to snoop under the tree pre-Christmas and figure out what present is theirs.  Having grown up in a house where these “organizational type-A” attempts were made on a daily basis I could have warned her what the outcome could have been, but then again I have also learned never to mess with a type a that has a plan. I wonder if I could submit that nugget of wisdom to “they”.

Truth is I have known for years that my wife was cloned from the same genetic type A material that my mother was. So it came as no surprise to me when she un-furled her Christmas wrapping plan. What I did not expect was to have my SIL be responsible for the chaos that erupted in my house last week.

See, my SIL went Christmas shopping for the boys; she also decided to take advantage of our house to wrap the presents. Our house, our wrapping paper, our tape, however, she did not use not “our system”(notice 17 years of marriage I am automatically accept the type a schemes as our). The presents were wrapped in non-conforming wrap.  

I am sure the explosion when my wife found out was felt across continental North America. You thought splitting the ordered balance of an atom caused a big boom; you should try breaking the ordered scheme of a type-a. All the explosive power, less radiation, though I expect the half-life is about the same.

For some reason my type-a-less heart take a small amount of comfort in watching the plan of a type-a disintegrate. I don’t mean that in a spiteful way, it just seems to warm a small part of my laid-back, relaxed heart.

On that note, I need to get back to re-wrapping some presents.