A friend of mine has a mother who has, to put it euphemistically, a very unusual way of collecting things. Having grown up with such an accumulation of stuff, this friend of mine has developed an almost allergic reaction to clutter of any sort, to the point where his own living quarters of several months look as spartan and sterile as a hotel room.
I suppose we all, to some extent, have formed certain quirks and traits within ourselves as a knee-jerk reaction to something our parents forced upon us. In my case, it is a fiercely territorial nature. We grew up in a household where personal space was a very loosely defined concept, and so as an adult, I like my privacy. I like scribbling things into my many notebooks, even the most mundane shopping lists, because I like knowing that no one is peering into them when I am gone. Sometimes I like throwing my clothes on my floor just because I can.
Once I dated someone who confessed to me that in college, if someone had accidentally forgotten to log out of their email at a public computer, he enjoyed going through their personal information. ”I’m really nosy,” he said with a smirk, obviously quite amused at his own irreverent disrespect for other people’s private affairs. I suppose I knew then that it would never work, but it took me another two more months to acknowledge it to myself.
