I've had an epiphany. You wouldn't know it by looking at me, but I've now realized that I'm a messy person. "No, Charlie, you're handwriting is so neat and you never spill anything but water on yourself." My friends, you're all wrong, I hate to say. I'm among the messiest of people; I'm as messy as the day is long. I'm like the Lionel Messi of being messy. (A soccer ball falls off of my shelf and hits the floor, which isn't really floor, but a bunch of toppled over magazines.) See? I'm a mess.

How did I get to this point? Let me make like good Nickelodeon and try to Figure It Out. In New York City, the apartments are so small that there isn't really a good place to put mess. It starts to creep from the bedroom to the kitchen and then invades the sink, couch, table, and foyer (for reference, in NYC, that's all one room). It consumes you like a good book and stacks up like a pile of good books. What I don't like is that I can't get rid of it. I recently tried cleaning and actually managed to make things messier. The gravitational pull of stuff to stuff is mind boggling. And god forbid you track mess outside of the house. Then the mess is loose!

You'll sometimes hear others call themselves and their friends 'hot messes.' This is not what I am. I'm a loose mess. I tend to carry stuff with me everyday, a certain mishmash of things that one could give you the impression that I'm homeless. Like at any one time, I have about two to three bottles on me to return to the market for money. And I have everything that I need to survive a night not at home. Now, you could call this prepared, but I've lived with it, and it's definitely homeless adjacent. There is always a one in four chance that I will be homeless, so maybe that's it, but geez, I need to get my ducks in a row. (I look back and seven ducks have been following me eating the loose bread falling from a hole in backpack.) Ah! My dinner!!!!

And if that's not enough, I pay for small purchases with coins. You wouldn't immediately suspect it, but the poorer you are, the easier it is to make a mess. When coins roll all over a grocery store floor as you buy a tomato and one piece of bread, that's when you know, "Hey, things aren't going so great." That hasn't happened yet, but one wrong tip of my coin purse could literally change my life. So if you ever see a trail of pennies or dimes, you have to assume I'm close by.

I'll get it under control, I think. I'm going away on vacation next week, so hopefully the mess won't follow me. I'm going to Florida, which I guess you could call the mess of the U.S. So, that should be quite therapeutic. I'll become neat, and I'll try to to shape Florida into a law abiding state. Shouldn't be too hard. Seems doable. I'm gonna attempt it. Don't try to stop me. And hey, if I mess things up, you'll never even notice, because it's Florida.