"Does anybody have a sticky note?"
I pull a small purple pad of post-its out of my desk drawer and toss them to Ian. The pad is clean, crisp, and unused. I touch it on the edges.
As I turn back to my computer I say, "But if I catch you putting them on your monitor, I'm taking them back."
A one-syllable laugh issues from another desk.
"Pet peeve?"
Uh-oh.
"Uh, yeah. Big time."
A pause.
"Does it have to be on the screen itself or can it be on the edge?"
Here we go. Everyone's looking at me and I'm starting to blush. I can feel it.
"Um, anywhere on the monitor at all."
Silence. Maybe it will go away?
"Is it when the edges aren't lined up straight?"
Sigh. I shouldn’t have opened my mouth.
"No, it's the little pieces of paper fluttering around where they don't belong." I'm specifically trying not to visibly gag while I say this.
And here come the questions.
So. I don't like little pieces of paper. Plastic too. Plastic's worse actually, if it's the right kind. Anything that can get gooey (like the sticky part on the back of a post-it, for instance), crinkled, dirty, and absolutely any kind of paper or plastic associated with food. I don't like stickers. I really don’t like stickers on fruit. I don’t like post-its. The ball bands that come around a skein of yarn? Gone as soon as the yarn stops holding them firmly in place. No wiggle room. And in some circumstances, cellophane is disturbing beyond all measure.
If ever you are with me in a restaurant of the burger-joint variety and you see my husband discreetly spirit away my cheeseburger to a remote location before returning it, magically endowed with condiments, you now know why. It’s one of those vile places that doesn’t have a proper bottle of ketchup on the table.
Look, we all have our little oddities. I once knew a girl who routinely enjoyed peanut butter and cheese sandwiches on hamburger buns. I have friends who are desperately afraid of bugs, bees, spiders, mice, and/or birds. (There was once an incident with an ice cream cone and a seagull on the beach - you had to be there.) I know someone who is superstitious about sleeping with socks on. I have another friend who insists on eating her M&Ms in a specific color order, which I thought was fairly unique until I started asking around.
You live long enough, you start to pick up a peculiarity or two. Mine is relatively harmless and keeps me away from disposable products, which, generally speaking, is a good thing.
For some reason though, people seem to find it fascinating. Each of my husband’s inquisitive brothers questioned me thoroughly on the topic early on in our acquaintance.
“Do receipts bother you?”
“Not usually.”
“Sugar packets?”
“Yes.”
“Mayonnaise packets?”
“A world of yes.”
And so on and so forth. I know a lot of scientist-types, as it turns out. People who like to test hypotheses and form theories. And now my office buddies are looking at me in a way I recognize. This will go one of two ways.
Good, wholesome, decent people satisfy their curiosity verbally and then politely refrain from leaving me post-it notes on office papers. If my new co-workers are the evil type, on the other hand...
Well, I’ll find out tomorrow when every square inch of my monitor either will or will not be entirely covered in post-it notes.