Third Cookie Gail Hommertzheim   © Copyright 2005 by Gail Hommertzheim

 My husband and I are just approaching our third wedding anniversary. We enjoy discussing our childhood memories and have found our Midwest upbringings to be quite humorous at times. I've recently paid close attention to some of our bizarre behavior and have tried to determine its source--nature or nurture.

 Tim, my husband, keeps his clothes in our basement. In fact, he has a bedroom down there. The bedroom is used to hold his stuff. It’s his den. Not a den with glossy wood paneling, a leather chair, books, a fireplace, and a painting of dogs and horses chasing pheasant across the countryside. Tim’s den is a dirty hole. I read somewhere that men need dens to provide them a place to think and rejuvenate. I need sunlight and nature—Tim needs darkness and ESPN. Growing up, he shared a basement bedroom with his two brothers and has never been able to completely break away from its secluded comfort.

I’ve learned to accept this, not understand, but accept. In Tim’s den there are clothes strewn about and I’m usually unable to tell which are clean, dirty, or half-dirty. When I do laundry, I simply throw his pile of clean clothes into a corner of the den where I think he will most likely be able to distinguish it from the clothes worn just once from the clothes that are clearly dirty. I know that his den will always be a mess. The clothes pile around as if they were hay or leaves that some animal had gathered to create a warm cushioned place to hibernate. Our cats have related. They make nests in the piles of clothing and protest loudly when moved.

The only thing I find truly unnerving and unacceptable is the dirty light switch and surrounding wall where Tim has haphazardly overextended his hand while turning on or off the light.

 I was taught at a young age to never touch the walls of our house because they would get dirty. I was scolded repeatedly for breaking this rule when I would unintentionally swipe my hand up the wall (touching much of it) when turning on or off a light switch, or a hand would catch myself against a wall while attempting some acrobatic. Walking through my childhood home was like following my mom through a store of breakables. I had to keep my hands, feet, and elbows close to my body making no sudden moves. When the fear of walls was added to the “no shoes in the house” rule, it became difficult to move about for fear of contaminating the walls and the floor. The ceiling was mentioned only once. My brother and I were jumping from my closet shelving to my bed reenacting Tarzan. We slid our hands across the rough 1970’s popcorn ceiling grabbing some imaginary vine. This game was stopped promptly when my parents heard our jungle cries and discovered us sitting among bits of ceiling in our underpants.

 Tim grew up in a similar “no wall touching” household, although his parents took more extreme measures to prevent their five children from touching a wall. Large plastic guards were placed around each light switch to vastly increase the protected area of wall around each switch. The oversized switch plates would get quite dirty with five children touching them. I guess it’s somehow better or easier to wipe down a switch plate then a wall. It must not have mattered that even a clean oversized switch plate was more of an eye sore than a dirty wall.

Regardless of the sense or senselessness of the rule, it has taken a deep hold on both of us. When Tim cleans his den, which is as frequent as snow in summer, he makes a special effort to show me the clean switch plate and we restate how virtuous it is to have clean switch plates. When cleaning, he will prioritize the two areas that were most important in his parent’s household—clean walls and clean carpet. Shoes, T-shirts, and crusty dishes can be scattered about, but the walls and carpet will be clean. In fact, Tim lays towels down in the heavy traffic areas to protect the carpet. More often he just uses a dirty pair of shorts, followed by a dirty shirt, and then dirty boxers to serve as stepping-stones across the pure carpet. Of course, this makes the basement even messier, but in his mind, with his parent’s rules deeply rooted, it is clean.

 Lately, I’ve noticed a little dinginess around the switches that my husband uses more frequently (especially in his den.) I realize that his hand must be remembering a larger switch plate then our standard size. Or I wonder; has he finally abandoned this rule?

 Most people are taught a set of rules by their parents as soon as their eyes can focus and their ears are cleared of amniotic fluid. In my house, rules were considered correct behavior for virtuous, mannered, civilized people. They may have referred to cleanliness, modesty, politeness, or quite often, some unknown purpose. What’s remarkable, is that these rules, taught to me as a child, tend to stick and I find myself passing them on without stopping to decide whether they actually make sense. I’m aware the very instant I verbalize a rule to a child (or my husband.) I may stop a moment to notice, but follow through with it anyway as if I had no control to change. I look up the rule from a neatly organized file cabinet, which I’m afraid, may take up a good portion of my brain, sometimes shoving out logic and creativity. The follow-through of these rules may make me virtuous and well behaved (according to my parents.) But I’m not sure they make my life better or happier. I keep very busy struggling to be correct, accurate, and efficient, but sometimes wonder why. Not, why am I this way—but why do I continue to be this way now that I’m 31, technically a grown-up, and can set my own rules.

 Another memory—the warm smell of melted chocolate and sweet vanilla filling our kitchen in the late afternoon on those days my mother decided to make cookies. The joy and expectation of eating the cookies were only slightly tarnished by the fact that I knew I was only allowed to eat two. “Only two and not after four-o-clock” was the repeated mantra of my mother, along with, “only one hour of TV” and “you didn’t make your bed today; go make it now.” I would make my bed (even though I would be messing it up again a few hours later), get my two cookies (always looking for the bigger ones even though they were all the same size), and eat them in front of the TV for exactly one hour watching The Facts of Life and Who’s The Boss (making sure they were eaten before four-o-clock.)

 My mother’s cookies were a reasonable size. They were the correct size; exactly one teaspoon of dough was used for each cookie precisely as the recipe had instructed. When I made cookies, I would sometimes fudge a little, so they would be bigger, increasing the total cookie in my two-cookie limit. If my mother would see this little trick, she would correct me, “they’re too big!” and we would have to take a little dough from each blob of raw dough and put it back in the bowl for the next batch.

 Why is Tim still uncomfortable sitting on someone’s good living room sofa when his own parents good sofa went out of style before it was even slightly worn? In fact, he still places an old blanket over our family room couch before sitting, even though it has a washable slipcover. Tim still can’t climb a fence without a twinge of fear since he and his brothers were “beaten with a two-by-four” after climbing their father’s newly built cedar fence. Tim and I (more I) make our bed a certain way, fold our towels, load the dishwasher, cut fruit, make hamburger patties, choose laundry soap, talk to children, brush our teeth, speak to a waiter, and make friends all because of how we were taught. Any variation of the rule seems odd or incorrect. Even though, upon leaving home, we realize the world is different and that it’s okay, we still like the way our mom made sock balls (or didn’t make sock balls.)

I confess. I’m comforted by my rules. Rules set a boundary between correct and incorrect. Correct means: how I was taught. As a child, anything other than—how we did it—seemed incorrect. I’m sure other kids felt the same way and my correct became their incorrect.

In general, people seem to like rules whether it be a boundary separating one country from the next, an arm rest between the seats on an airplane, or a distinction between those who eat white bread from those who eat wheat bread, those who prefer melon slices from those who like melon cubes, or I, who eat corn right off the cob from Tim, who cuts it off first. In fact, I was unaware of the existence of wheat bread until 1980 when my seven-year old friend pulled out an unusually brown peanut butter and jelly sandwich from her Holly Hobby lunch box. She looked at my Wonder Bread and proceeded to tell me that white bread would ball up in my stomach and stay there for a very long time. In her family, white bread was incorrect.

 I have now chosen wheat bread. I’ve been liberated from the oppressive rules of my childhood. Wait a minute, no, I think I’m following a new rule: Eat more fiber. It all becomes muddled and complicated. I think I secretly enjoy all these rules. I wonder if they make me secure in my insecurity. When there is so much chaos in the world, do I just hold on to neatly folded underwear because it’s something I can control? Does dusting weekly help me keep track of time? Does an organized linen closet work as well as Prozac?

 While Tim and I seem to have been raised in a similar way with regards to household rules for cleanliness and order, we are very different. I’ve been classified as a Rational under the classic Myers-Briggs Personality Type Indicator. My profile states that I “drive to unlock the secrets of nature” and that I have an “insatiable hunger to accomplish goals.” I’m a problem-solver, an analyzer, and I value intelligence. I’m “rigorously logical, “fiercely independent,” and “dislike messiness and inefficiency.” It also states that Rationals are “very scarce comprising as little as 5%-10% of the population.” I knew I was different. Even more disturbing, my rare temperament tends to “become obsessed with mindless repetitive, sensate activities, such as over-drinking. They may also become absorbed with minutia and details that they would not normally consider important to their overall goal.” Yikes, It appears that I’m obsessive-compulsive, loosing sight of my life goals, and may start drinking heavily at any moment.

 Tim, on the other hand, has profiled as an Artisan. According to Myers-Briggs he likes a world of “solid objects that can be made and manipulated and of real-life events that can be experienced here and now.” Artisans are bold risk-takers ready for adventure as long as they can get there quickly. Rules are of little importance. They have a “winning way with people and are irresistibly charming.” Tim’s profile states that he needs to be free to do whatever he wishes, when he wishes. He resists being “tied, bound, confined, or obligated.” Life, for an Artisan, is about having fun today.

 Recent studies suggest that we are born with our temperaments intact, and therefore, it could be concluded that parental upbringing may not attribute much to our behavior. In my experience, it’s evident that parental rules are powerful; possibly more powerful than the temperament we were born with. I believe the rules we learned as children are just piled on top of our temperament and appear to be as strong, or stronger, than our genes.

What’s interesting is that despite our very different natural temperaments, Tim and I have been influenced by our upbringing so strongly, that even a no rules rebel like Tim can become an obsessive cleaner when it comes to light switches, carpet, and couches. His natural inclination would be to race all his friends around in a new Ferrari he bought with his 401K searching for pleasure, excitement, and people to charm. Fortunately, this natural urge has been overruled by his parent’s modesty and frugality.

I, on the other hand, now realize that my temperament happens to tragically match many of the rules of my upbringing; creating a magnified version of myself.

I’ve seen Tim’s rules in his parents and am sometimes amazed at how they so seamlessly pass to the next generation. Tim also sees them in me. It’s as if these rules and rituals were fed to us along with our corndogs and applesauce to form the building blocks of our personalities and idiosyncrasies. When Tim and I talk about raising children, I can hear his father speaking as clearly as if Tim had just pressed play to some recording from his own childhood. “Our kids won’t go to fancy restaurants…our kids aren’t getting candy at the grocery store to keep them quiet.”

 Even more remarkable, I hear my own mother speaking from my mouth. “Sunday dinner should be eaten at home.” I’m shocked and disappointed to realize I often have little power to resist. I realize that many things my mother taught to be right or wrong (or just in bad taste) were recordings of my grandmother who I didn’t know well, but can vividly see, at times, in my mother. I know when I hear a recording from my grandmother because it will sound so decisive and definitive—“Don’t lick your knife.” It will lack emotion and conviction, unlike when I hear what I know to be my mother’s own thoughts. “That’s not how we eat tomatoes,” she said laughing, when I slurped a slice with rude pleasure upon discovering how a real homegrown tomato tastes. My true mother will sound softer, genuine, and passionate. I think Tim can also decipher what is really me as opposed to when I press play. I can too—right after I hear it.

 I would have liked to pick and choose what rules I would follow before they were engrained, before I had a right to choose. But it seems that these rules take control so quickly and the feelings of right and wrong that I felt as a child are more powerful than the logic I use as an adult to understand their value. They feel correct and comfortable, but also oppressive. It can seem as though I’m unable to resist this programming even though I’m well aware that it’s happening. Even worse, it has become difficult to distinguish what’s really me—pure and uninfluenced.

 Succumbing to these rules will produce a very predictable outcome for my life. In short, I will become my mother. I will impose the same rules on my children and they will become me. My life will be predictable—I’ll only need to look back to see the future. I will simply regurgitate all the things I’ve heard and nothing will change. I will be comforted knowing that if A then B. No surprises. No risk. It’s not so bad. But will I be happy?

 Being aware of this phenomenon, I believe, has taken me slightly off my predictable course. I have a chance to derail and find my own way because I’ve looked and seen that another way exists. Getting there is the hard part. It would certainly be bumpy and my direction would be unclear with nothing locking me into place. There is nothing wrong with the direction I’m going, but sometimes it doesn’t make sense. Sometimes getting every last drop out of the ketchup bottle just isn’t worth the effort. Sometimes it’s okay to leave a window open when the heater’s running because I’ll sleep better and it just feels good. On the other hand, knowing there’s no dust on the top of my doorframes can be quite satisfying. I wonder if rules (in general) are to blame for my feelings of entrapment, or it’s just disturbing because they’re someone else’s rules.

 I’ve noticed that some people are able to release themselves from whatever senseless rules they encountered as children, and therefore seem more content and maybe even happier. They may be blind, deaf, and even slow. This is not cynicism or criticism. I’m not referring to visually, audibly, or mentally impaired as from a physiological standpoint. These people are perfectly healthy and capable of many things. In fact, they are capable of, what some would say, is the most important thing—happiness itself. Their talent lies in their ability to actually not hear, see, or comprehend their parent’s rules and therefore not internalize or file them in their brains. They make up their own rules. Do these people really exist? I don’t know, but it’s nice to think they do because it gives hope for those of us who may feel enslaved from time to time. It means that no matter what your personality type or upbringing, a person, maybe even I, could create my own rules.

 My neighbor, Jan, may be one of these rare people. Jolly would be the best description for her. Her loud uninhibited laugh can be heard from several houses away. She speaks in a high-pitched voice, which resonates excitement for life and a genuine interest in the moment. She is also a slob. A stained misshaped T-shirt, nylon gym shorts, and Teva sandals are her summer standard. Her hair is usually sticking up haphazardly from wherever she pushed it last. Jan works at the library and plays volleyball on weekends. She drives a light blue pick-up truck. She has never been married. Her elderly mother visits several times a year and they sit on the porch in white plastic chairs among piles of old newspapers. A colorful plastic garden gnome moons visitors from the porch wall. Beer bottles, neglected plants, and candy wrappers hide in corners.

Her back yard is a mass of vegetation that has grown around several rusty bicycles, empty plastic plant pots, yellow newspapers blown into corners, antique tomato cages, and garden tools strewn about. A Poinsettia, lanky and pale, hangs onto life in a dust filled red metallic pot near the crumbling garage.

 Jan drinks obscene amounts of dark beer and eats whatever tastes good. I’ve uncovered no rules in her life. She has no agenda and no ambition to be anything other than what she already is. Surprisingly, I don’t see her mess anymore, unless I make a conscious effort to notice. I realize that this is how she has chosen to be and it works for her. She seems to just live.

 What does that mean—to just live? The other day Tim pleaded, “I want to just live…” right after I imposed my mother’s (or possibly grandmother’s) rules upon him which seemed to verbalize from my lips before I was aware that it was me and not my mother standing behind me speaking.

He walked in our front door after work. He was tired, out of words, and craving his den. I said, “hello, why did you wear those pants, don’t eat too much because I’m making dinner, take the vacuum cleaner down stairs (this is when he looked at me like a shipwreck victim), and will you clean the johnnies (crap) out of the cat box, it smells.”

 Later, I found Tim drinking a beer while curled up on a blanket covering our couch. He was wearing his pink heart boxers I had given him for Valentine’s Day and reading Shelby Foote’s third volume of The Civil War. He looked up at me with the same sullen face I know I must have had when my mother found me watching Three’s Company and nibbling nervously on my third cookie.

So, is Jan a slob because her mother is a slob? Was she just born this way as research currently indicates? Or is she just a rebel with her own rules? I’ve found that Jan’s mother seems a bit uncomfortable on Jan’s fraternity house porch. I’ve seen her in a neat dress with a soft voice sitting next to a mound of cigarettes in a pot, which used to contain the geranium she’d given Jan a month earlier. She looks at her daughter with love, but also with disappointment—like she has not really followed her lead, her rules. I’m not sure, but it seems that Jan is not the daughter that she hoped her to become. No husband, no children, not even a career as an excuse. Jan is just Jan—nothing to analyze or dissect. She appears completely independent of her surroundings and upbringing, and she seems incredibly satisfied.

I wonder what it feels like to be Jan. What does she think about? With no rules to reference, I would suspect she’d have a lot of time to create and enjoy. It would be weird to make decisions by myself, without checking my files first. According to research, my temperament is as unchangeable as my skin or eye color, but rules of behavior are ultimately chosen. We just have to wait until we’re eighteen (or 31, if you’re a late bloomer.)

 The question is simple. Would my life be more or less satisfying if I stuffed my unfolded underwear in the dresser, forgot to put my napkin on my lap, ate eggs past the expiration date, or used a toothbrush more than the recommended three months? In reality, people like me change their toothbrush with the first day of the new season so not to forget. We use cloth napkins, iron them, and enjoy it. We rotate the recommended three sets of bed sheets each week—one set on the bed, one in the laundry, and one neatly folded in the linen closet nestled between lavender sachets. We organize cleaning supplies by the rooms of their intended use careful to not share sponges or brushes. We change the dishtowel daily and microwave sponges to kill deadly bacteria. We manage every cent on an excel spreadsheet under detailed budget categories and pay bills early. We cook meals that contain less than 30% of calories from fat and eat the four food groups at every meal, even breakfast. And we also tend to eat only two cookies.

 I suspect that if I stopped these rituals I would just slip away into some messy oblivion. I would have nothing to stand on, nothing to hold things in place. I would feel like I was melting or spilling. Or, like Jan, I may feel content and free. Without question, I would be something completely different, maybe even unidentifiable.

 What would a third cookie do to me? A reasonable person would believe that there is a reasonable explanation for the two-cookie rule. A third cookie must be harmful in some way to a person’s metal or physical health; or maybe it would somehow harm another person and therefore a rule had been created to save humankind from harming itself. The rules of the virtuous are created to protect them from a dangerous world so that they might live longer and buy themselves a few more years to continue enjoying their rule abiding rituals.

 But what if I rebelled? I would just be testing the rule, of course. I would be “unlocking the secrets of nature.” I would sacrifice my virtuous life for science and for revealing truths in our social systems—not for any pleasure in eating a third cookie. I would begin to analyze the rule and may realize that there would be no possible way of any harm coming to myself or to those around me. I would carefully reach into the cookie jar and the warm blanket of rules would slide off my shoulders and onto the floor. I may feel cooler, maybe cold at first, abandoned, naked. I may also feel lighter, able to move my arms more freely; I would feel the air, the breeze. I would have to see my own unchangeable skin color with my unchangeable blue eyes. But, I would have chosen to behave differently and would, therefore, be different, maybe even recreated. My family would see me too. They would see a rebel, but I would see myself—maybe, for the first time.

 At that critical moment, the blanket would feel better, comfortable, but not real. It would be an existence, not a life. It would be surviving without purpose—an ant locked in a jar of crumbs, a seed never planted, a stale cookie at the bottom of the Tupperware that no one ate because everyone already had two. The poor stale cookie would be tossed out, past it’s prime and no longer fit to eat. It would be wasted, which ironically, would simultaneously unnerve the virtuous who had had to make the difficult decision of prioritizing rules—three cookies, wasted cookie, three cookies, wasted cookie.

I think I’ve nibbled at a third cookie out of curiosity, but have not yet truly indulged in one. I identify too much with my behavior to abandon it completely. Clearly, some of the rules taught to me by my parents are pure lunacy, but I still find some comfortable and even useful. There’s still something that feels right about how Mom made cookies or insisted that dinner be civilized. I like some of these things because structure and the predicable organization of behavior allow me to think more clearly. Orderliness may even give me the freedom to create and learn where I otherwise would be too uncomfortable or distracted. This is why I’ve chosen to continue some of these things—not all, but some.

 I’ve even begun to discover that some things I once thought were rules from Mom are actually neurotic creations of my very own. I’ve recently noticed dirty baseboards and outdated cheese at my parent’s house and found myself scolding them for their lack of diligence in these areas. My parents have loosened up while I’ve become the inspector and enforcer of the very rules they taught me. I’ve even taken the liberty of adding some of my own.

 More specifically, I remember asking my mom how many sets of sheets she has for her bed. She looked at me a little oddly and said, “just one, why?”

I responded that I’d read that three sets are recommended so there will always a spare if one is on the bed and the other’s in the laundry. I, of course, had been following the recommendation assuming that she also had been following this protocol.

 “I hate folding sheets, so I have just one set which I wash and then put right back on the bed,” Mom said.

 Efficient, I thought.

 Mom stared blankly unable to read me then turned back to the sink and began washing a potato, “I stopped doing that a long time ago, before you kids. You’ll get tired of it eventually,” she added.

So multiple folded sheet sets is actually my own rule? I can’t believe my house is actually cleaner and more orderly than my mother’s. Impossible, I thought.

 “We’ll see,” I said. “The difference between us is that I actually enjoy it. It’s a small mindless way to have order. Rules can be relaxing for us Rationals, but since we’re so scarce you may not understand.”

She laughed.

“But—they’re only relaxing if they’re my own rules, or at least the ones I’ve chosen to keep,” I added.

 She laughed again.
 
 

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