oppressive order

oppressive order

I shall never forget our visit to this house - it was a colleague of my husband's. She and her businessman husband lived in a large, comfortable house in one of the best addresses in town. I was prepared for some display of wealth and comfort and good taste but what I actually saw was something straight out of inside outside magazine or the television shows on good living.
Everything in the house stayed exactly in the place where it was meant to be, not a newspaper out of place. The sink was totally empty and dry. Did they not even drink water and leave glasses lying around on the table or the sink? And the bathroom? how can it be so fresh and dry? Did anyone ever use the bathrooms in the house or were you expected to wash and wipe it after every use? What about the dust from the roads? Was it also scared away from such perfection that it dared not enter this house?
I thought to myself- "well perhaps it is possible to keep a house like this if you didnt have children". Children have a beautiful way of bringing chaos into ones life and making you accept the inevitability of it. Just as i was thinking these thoughts, in walked two smartly dressed kids, 7 and 9, and wished us. They walked and talked and handled all the crystal and expensive crockery with so much poise and delicacy. And when they picked up something it went back exactly to the same place. They had obviously been trained since birth.

This was just too much - that they actually lived in this hell of super perfection. I wondered what it must be like for them to live with so much order and discipline. Would they grow up into order obsessed people who would crack up at the slight sign of disorder? Could they ever eat out without noticing all the dust and dirt or actually falling sick due to lack of resistance? Was it not the privelege of children to be disorderly, disobedient and messy? was it not an exposure necessary for a balanced personality development? Were the disorderly sides of these children repressed and would it manifest in violent ways somewhere totally unexpected?
Were the parents giving them a kind of life that Siddhartha, the prince enjoyed until his first exposure to all the ugly aspects of life. Would an encounter with reality be a great shock to them when and if it happens?
Anyways, I was very happy to get out of the house without dropping anything on the table or staining the napkin or spilling water around the wash basin although I must admit that I had a secret vicious desire to drop my plate on the ground and check for the reaction from the members of the house!Of course better sense prevailed butI have never been happier to return to the chaos of my life.