I don't know why...

But I enjoy watching those wife swapping shows. Maybe I have a low IQ. I dunno. Every episode is the same - swap people that are complete opposites. Um, can you guess what's going to happen? I don't understand why people sign up when they know the stuff they love, love, love - base their lives on - could be trashed. Every week the swapped wives turn their new families lives upside down. The family that plays sports 24/7 has to give them up for a week. The family that eats only raw food must eat cooked food for a week. The family of pirates can't do anything piratey for a week. It is very entertaining.

Take the episode I watched the other night - the overly, anal family that organized and labeled everything. Everything. I missed some of it - you know, cuz' you gotta make yourself a cocktail when you peer into the lives of others - the family looked like they were labeling their clothing after they did the laundry. Gasp! They were so into labels, they had sections of their freezer labeled. The 11 or 12 year old daughter even had a drawer labeled "today's clothes" and "tomorrow's clothes". She sorted her outfits before wearing - days in advance! And when she'd go over to friends' houses - if they left the room - she'd tidy up while they were gone. She didn't like the mess. She would wait to do it until her friends left the room...she was hiding her need to be in a clean, organized environment. She was doing it in secret like a bad habit.

I'm organized and regimented in some ways, but I've chilled out in my old age. I realized being over-the-top organized is kind of a cop out. I was overly organized because I didn't trust myself to remember or to know or to think. It's like that family didn't want to have to think - they wanted the label to tell them what to do - where to put things, where to find them. But that's no fun. It's like being a child - being told what to do all the time. Thinking is good. It flexes your brain muscles. Sure, it's nice to go to the grocery store and recall that the beef section of your freezer was empty the last time you were in there. But what's the big deal if you forget to buy steak? It's probably not an issue - people who label sections of their freezer probably keep a detailed grocery list, organized in a little expandable folder full of to-do lists with them at all times. I dunno. Everything labeled and in a specific place is way too rigid. It's too restrictive.

Someone should do a study about Martha Stewartites. The folks who label sections of their closets and freezers, have a specific spot for everything they own, need to follow directions on how to make things look natural, what percentage will have memory problems in their later years?

Yeah. So. That's my rant.

I like me them wife swap shows. It is fascinating to see how other people live...even if it is an edited, for-entertainment-purposes-only version.