From time to time I have this habit of displaying extremely neurotic traits that shimmer dramatically against my otherwise laidback persona (if by “laidback persona,” I mean “overwhelming denial of brain’s internal short-circuiting on continuous basis”…and I do).
Maybe I’ll rearrange the way my bathroom soap lies in its decorative dish compulsively for a few minutes, or organize my bookshelf by height order at 3 a.m. But this is more comprehensive. I refer to it as Room Raiders Syndrome. Back in the early 2000s when America was just starting to embrace the whole creepy voyeurism trend and it was becoming more socially acceptable for telecasted airwaves, MTV was producing a show entitled Room Raiders.
The premise was simple: a sexy bachelorette would invade the rooms of three painfully oblivious guys and judge them solely based on whatever she found in their rooms, which would eventually culminate in a date with one of them without ever having seen or spoken to them. This situation could be reversed with a sexy bachelor, and the series even featured a few gay episodes.
I would come home every day from middle and high school, flip on the tube and there was a 90% chance at least a couple back-to-back episodes were on around 4 p.m. Day after day, it was hammered into my head that the only way I would ever get a date in this cold, unforgiving world is to have an utterly mind-blowing living space that could survive arbitrary guerilla raids from attractive young males. The notion that at any moment I could be abducted and hurled in the back of a van was inconsequential at this point, I guess.
Three bachelorettes anxiously await a date with Taylor Lautner lookalike or Augie Artiles.
From then on, at the very least subconsciously, I’ve been bordering on anal retentive as to how my room looked from outside my own perspective. This was beyond having a keen eye for interior design – it was bordering on Monk-like attention to detail.
While folding laundry, I’d wonder if someone kicked in my window wielding an AK-47 and a mutant attack giraffe and my life depended on their opinion on my wardrobe, which would make a better impression. Inevitably, the nicer shirt would go on top of the pile in my dresser and the lesser of the two would make its way to the bottom, out of sight from potentially armed suitors. Survival of the trendiest.
Cute, Brand New Abercrombie and Fitch Lion defeats Cousin Rachael’s Hand-Me-Down Buffalo. Lion
will be worn tonight at a party. Buffalo will make friends with loose buttons in bottom drawer and has already begun writing suicide note in form of price tag for Plato’s Closet.
Perhaps there’s some logic to that madness. I’d probably be more likely to wear a more attractive shirt than one I’m embarrassed of, rendering its place at the top of the pack a reasonable organizational tactic. But that’s not the motive on my mind – for some reason, I’m more willing to default to spontaneous assault as a viable rationale to the organization of my T-shirts.
I’m also a packrat, which makes organizing my room to suit imaginary standards a particularly grueling task that requires constant vigilance. I’m not so much worried about the blacklight test (I do have some decency, y’all), but what if he got out those tongs. Those things are like the Jaws of Life when it comes to prying through your personal life. Every so often, I’ll thumb through the Mt. Vesuvius of archaic documents and papers that collect on my desk. I wonder if someone were to leaf through them, what they would think of me.
Painful realization of my inadequacy, in the style of Allie Brosh.
Monstrous manila folder of debate ballots – I’m talented and quick-witted. Scrapbook – my friends love me, which is good. Scholarship info – I’m resourceful. 8th grade report card – fucking nerd who had an aneurism when she got a B once. Pile of marked up scripts vs. bulletin board of playbills – theatre geek who has no life vs. cultured aristocrat. Notes from Mom pre-unlimited texting threatening to kill me if I go over my limit one more time – social, but woefully repressed. Okay, maybe some of these things needed to go.
College is a temporary Band-Aid to this psychosis. Namely because I won't bring anything up from home that I don't actually want in my dorm. And because the realization that people I didn’t know would likely be milling about through my room came to fruition. I'm a trooper.
However, now that I’m back home for the summer, I still impulsively throw out things I wouldn’t want anyone to see. I’ll involuntarily twitch at the sight of old notebooks I inexplicably kept that are tortuously embarrassing…
But at least I don’t own stupid underwear.
Note: Sara Solano is an avid watcher of The Travel Channel and hasn't watched MTV (with the exception of a couple episodes of Silent Library two weeks ago) in about four years. When she isn't staring down all of her wordly possessions, she's sleeping with her stuffed tiger Drew or making prank phone calls to Slovakian telemarketers.
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