I’m Ok, you have clothes in the dryer you need to fold
Feb 23, 2009 Memories
As a young married couple the purchase of our first house was a time to celebrate. As part of the ceremony of the purchase I was expected to entertain the in-laws. In fact the order in which the first visitors were invited was something of major politics. To keep the peace one of the first to visit us for dinner was a relative of my husband who I shall call Mabel.
To get the house ready to entertain I started cleaning a few days prior to the dinner date. I cleaned the house top to bottom and side to side. Mabel was a judgmental person and I wanted to her to see the flawless perfection that was me as a housewife.
As I arrived home that afternoon I worried that I may have missed a detail and a flaw would be discovered. On my way to my back door I saw and greeted my neighbor. I told her that I had work to do. I explained the guest that I was about to face and how I was pre-occupied with details. She told me she had just read I’m Ok, You’re Ok, and in an attempt to simply Transactional Analysis she told me, “If a person needs to find your flaw they will look until they discover it, so the best thing to do is to put the flaw on the front doorstep so that they see it immediately. They will stop the search before they enter the house.”
Making dinner I pondered the advice. It made sense and knowing Mabel she would look until she found it. However, at that point the house was clean and perfect and flawless…except… in the laundry room in the dryer was a load of clothes that I had yet to fold. I could have left the kitchen and folded and put away the clothes, but I have never had a guest go into the laundry room, let alone look into the machines
You know where this story goes. We had a nice dinner and as I was doing the dishes after dinner I hear a voice coming from the laundry room “oh look you still have clothes in the dryer.”
The next time Mabel came to dinner she ate in the laundry room.
Tags: deborah rheuban, in-laws, laundry room