In the middle of a world of seemingly endless catastrophes, there is good news for messy people today! First, let me say that I am not endorsing messiness necessarily. I am simply saying that it is an affliction from which I suffer. For my entire life I have  struggled on a daily basis not to be encapsulated and eventually suffocated by the enormous stacks of things I do not know where to put. So far, the addition of organizational systems hasn’t helped except to supply me with even more places in which to create stacks. I’m not as bad as those people I see photos of on-line who have their rooms filled floor to ceiling with unopened boxes of things  from Ebay. But I do save a lot of stuff that I think is funny. (Here. This is my bathroom.) Combine that tendency with a constant feeling that I am not getting enough accomplished, and you have…well, I have a lot of stuff that needs to be put somewhere. But now, in to this heretofore tumultuous landscape, comes  a golden ray of light .

“Research on mice shows that those carrying the most lice had calmer immune systems than uninfested rodents.” says an article in the NY Times this very day.”The finding may have implications for studying the causes of asthma and allergies in people.”

I was raised by two very anal retentive parents, both of whom eventually succumbed to auto immune related ailments. When I was growing up, I was not only constantly upbraided for my messiness but suffered  from both allergies and asthma. When both ailments cleared up after I moved away from home, I kind of assumed that maybe they had an emotional core. But now,I am thinking that maybe what was really ailing us all might have just been insufficient lice.

I’m aware that this sounds like the wrong thing to say, but I am kind of thrilled. Developing a fondness for lice has never been on my to-do list up until now. ( but as a dog lover, it isn’t such a bad idea. To say nothing of the fact that where I live there is a constant if intermittent rodent problem. ) So let me sum it up this way: if what we have here is the discovery of a long hoped for upside to messy housekeeping,  then I am not just an early adaptor, but also truly blessed.

This entry was posted on Saturday, April 25th, 2009 at 11:21 am and is filed under blog post. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.