Tales From Exit 22 by Al Batt

Al Batt’s column appears every Wednesday and Sunday.

Unions do it. Criminals do it. Even governments do it. Let’s get organized.

We are told to keep calm and get organized, but the correct order is to get organized and then become calm.

We have unreliable superpowers that make becoming organized an elusive concept. That’s why most label makers find their way to garage sales quickly.

We delay becoming organized. We put off everything except procrastination. That’s why the unicorns missed getting on Noah’s Ark.

How many kitchen stoves have the correct time? The time changes, but stove clocks never change. They aren’t organized.

A friend is so organized that every time he changes a password for his digital devices, he changes the name of his goldfish to match it.

A business owner of my acquaintance is so well organized that he knows exactly how much money he is making. I can tell when business is slow for him. He hands his business card to a prospective customer and says, “Take a quick look at it and don’t bend it before you give it back.”

He likes a messy office because he knows that everything is in the pile somewhere.

People who exercise regularly are organized. They have to be. Folks who wear Fitbits even get something good out of forgetting the car keys in the house and having to walk back to get them. They aren’t forgetful or wasting time. They are getting steps.

Successful football teams are organized. When the line opens a hole big enough to drive a truck through, there is a guy who drives the truck.

After I became a licensed driver, I organized things in my car. Jumper cables, gas can, blanket, gloves, stocking cap, cherry bombs (the store was out of flares), a flashlight with dead batteries, towing chain, a couple of cans of motor oil, a flat spare tire and a phone book. If I got lost, I wasn’t worried. There were maps in the phone book. I was prepared because I was organized.

Shopping lists are prime examples of organization. They work, too, unless you enter a grocery store with too many kinds of ketchup.

Speaking of stores, I waited in line in a busy convenience store. I didn’t mind. Life is a line. We should never be in a hurry to get to the front. A line is a place of second thought. We reconsider our words and actions. Shouldas and couldas fill minds. Being in line isn’t necessarily time wasted.

“How are you doing?” I asked the guy behind me. It never hurts to be friendly and he didn’t look as if he’d come from a long line of short tempers.

“Meh,” he replied. His soliloquy bolstered me.

The fellow ahead of me in line was organized. He wore pants with so many pockets that you needed a math degree just to estimate the number. He had his life in his pockets. He was one of those who liked to pay with the exact change. Most of us like to do that, but he did it. He kept his nickels and dimes in one pocket. He kept his pennies and quarters in another. I understand that. I put the same things into the same parts of my backpack. It saves panic searching. It took him so long to count out the correct change that I thought he might have considered the convenience store to be affordable housing.

He took the time to use one of his unspent coins on a scratch-off ticket he’d purchased. The audacity of hope. He probably thought that we were enjoying his actions as much as he was. He was both maddening and organized.

A retired friend has organized his life into two categories: Things he has to do, otherwise known as the things he might do. And things he’ll never do.

I stopped at a business to close a clothing deal. A woman drove her car into the side of the building housing that enterprise. I’m sure that she’d told someone that she was going to run into the store for a minute and she did just that. It was a car with the headliner flopping down. She backed the car away from the broken bricks, put it into the parking place where she’d meant it to be and turned off the engine. She came into the store, told a clerk what she had done and said that she’d be back.

Then she walked next door to a restaurant and ate breakfast.

That woman was organized.