Preferences

The Mild Wife is fond of saying that people have "preferences." Like if you were to look in my closet, you'd probably notice that a fair number of my clothes follow a pattern. I don't wear tons of bright colors, for example. Sure, I've got some yellow and red shirts, but there are a lot more items in dark blues and blacks. I don't duplicate shirts or clothing items, but some colors definitely show up more than others. Like she says, people have preferences.

Now, this also extends to habits in general. Heck, I've been known to say "habits die hard" on more than one occasion (like this blog post). It's the same basic principle as having preferences, only with muscle memory and repetition added to the mix. If you've done something for weeks or months, it's very likely that you'll naturally default to that again.

In this particular case, the habit has to do with wrapping and unwrapping presents. To be completely frank, I tend to be somewhat meticulous about this activity (leading to some amusing anecdotes). I was that kid that would carefully remove the tape at the seams of the wrapping paper, rather than just tearing through any piece of exposed wrapping paper. I don't know why I approached the presents this way, I just did. I know my siblings didn't do this, so I figure it's more of a nature than a nurture thing.

The Mild Wife has obviously seen this, since we've shared more than a few birthdays and Christmases together. She is more similar to my siblings in this regard, but she knows my preferences, so she mostly just chuckles while I try to surgically remove wrapping paper. It's not her style, but she derives a little bit of amusement from watching me go about unwrapping presents in my own style.

Now, you might be wondering why I'm writing about this in early June. It's not my birthday yet, and it's certainly not near Christmas. So why am I writing about presents?

Grocery deliveries, that's why.

We still have groceries delivered to the Mild Home on occasion, and one of the things that happens is that they put a sticker over the top of paper bags. I've never seen an official explanation, but these stickers identify the delivery by using a random word (something like "lake") and also the number of bags. So when we get our groceries, if there are two bags, they'll each have a sticker, and they'll say "lake 1/2" and "lake 2/2" on them.

More importantly, these stickers are placed at the top of the bag, to seal them. It's not just a label on the side, the stickers are sort of a tamper-proof seal for your delivery. The sticker thing is big enough that you can't realistically get to the contents without removing it or tearing the bag. I would imagine the intent is to provide a sense of reassurance that nothing got in to the bag mid-trip.

However, those qualities also mean that we have to remove the sticker once we receive delivery. We more or less have to tamper with the seal in order to put the groceries away. You can probably see where this is going; when I'm in charge of putting the groceries away, I fastidiously peel off the sticker and then fold it down inside the bag. Basically, I remove it as simply as possible. You can still tell where the sticker used to be, but it's an attempt to be surgical. Again, people have preferences.

This all came to a head recently when the Mild Wife and I were putting away groceries. She was watching me carefully peel the sticker back on one of the eggs when she blurted out, "you put away groceries like you unwrap presents!"

She's not wrong, but the whole thing was met with much laughter. We both had a good, strong chuckle about it all, and it took a little bit longer to put the groceries away that day. Better yet, I can't help but chuckle every time I see one of those delivery bags with a sticker.