My original title of this entry was “Out of the Closet” and the picture was of six black garbage bags at the top of our stairs- filled with clothing purged from our closet. But that photo didn’t begin to convey the delight which my wife and I felt upon having FINALLY done this after months of thinking about it and needing to do it- – – so I decided that a photo of the closet itself would be at least a little more festive. And because my wife does not like too much of herself or her life beamed all over the world wide web, I was careful to point the camera at my own clothes. If you are interested in seeing her sequined evening gowns, chinchilla furs and Victoria’s Secrets negligees, you’ll just have to break into our house and peek for yourself. You won’t see them here!
It was interesting – Kathy was mostly purging stuff that she had owned for a long time and worn many many times which was no longer “in” – while I am completely (and blissfully) ignorant when it comes to such matters as
“in-ness.” The only “in” that interests me is whether or not I can fit IN to the clothes. So for me it was a matter of discarding all the pants with 42 waists (thanks to my weight loss, wearing such pants would likely lead to an unfortunate and unintentional strip tease) and the XXL shirts – and returning to the hangers a whole pile of clothes from earlier in my life when I was the size I am now which have been gloomily residing on the top shelf of the closet for at least a couple of years.
I thought that once we had filled six bags of clothes for Goodwill and cleaned the floor of the closet enough for the carpeting to once again be visible, we were done – but then Kathy piped up cheerily with the suggestion that I organize my clothes a bit . . . dress pants, khakis, jeans. . . long sleeve dress shirts, short sleeve dress shirts, polo shirts, rugby shirts, fleeces. . . suits and tuxes . . . and within all that I could even organize them by color! It was about then that I started wondering if my wife had visited some Martha Stewart website that had somehow hypnotized her into spouting absurd jibberish like this. It’s the only explanation I can think of for my wife of 17 years thinking for a moment that I would even consider such lunacy. Surely she had to know by now that Greg Berg is to Closets what Katie Couric is to the CBS Evening news . . . a disastrous failure. (but good at other things.)
Come to think of it, her suggestion wasn’t completely crazy because I met her more than halfway. I actually hung my pants altogether – the first time in my life I have done that – and arranged my shirts with short sleeve button downs to the left, polo shirts after that, and long sleeve shirts after that (not in much order, although I did manage to hang my four rugby shirts together.) This was an advancement for me roughly akin to Bob Beamon’s record-shattering long jump in the Mexico Olympics of 1968. . . an amazing achievement far beyond anything he had ever done before, and something he was never able to equal again. On the other hand, I have spent many happy hours on a treadmill this summer, so this is obviously a summer for Strange Surprises in the life of Greg Berg. Strange but Happy Surprises, I might add.
So there you have it- No one will mistake my closet for the closet of my best friend Marshall or my brother-in-law Mark- two of the most amazingly organized guys I know- but it is a step in the right direction, a dip of my toe into strange new waters. Whether or not I plunge in further or retreat back to the familiar confines of chaos remains to be seen.
Care to place a bet?