My daughter and I have a deal. We don’t say “anal retentive” because it sounds so very ickky. We say “detail oriented.” There. Doesn’t that sound so much better?

So, I’m detail oriented. I’m a lawyer. What did you expect?

I spent part of last weekend doing a task I’ve wanted to do for more than a year. It was a detail that had really bugged me for a very long time. I alphabatized my DVD collection. Now, all 246 DVDs march from one shelf to another in regularized order. It starts with numbers — “8mm”, “1941” and “2010”– and ends with “Zodiac”.

I find myself compelled, yes compelled, to do such things at times. Fairly regularly, I pick up my shirts from the laundry and find I must, yes must, arrange my shirts by color. All the white shirts together, all the blue shirts together; stripes are so problematic for me.

Most people are happy with a single sock drawer. Not me. I have a drawer for black socks, one for blue and gray socks and a third for browns. Of course, then, there’s a fourth drawer for a hodgepodge of “casual” socks, mostly white.

How can you live with the prospect of mixing up your blue socks with your black socks when you dress in the morning?

Similarly, I have racks of ties. One for yellow, one for blue, one for black and one for greens and reds.

As I dress in the mornings, I take overweening pride in the details. Everything matches just so. Even the jewelry matches the belt buckle. The crease just so, the platen of buttons on the shirt perfectly aligns with the zipper of the pants. Even insouciance is planned out and the seemingly whimsical detail is thought out.

Need I even speak of the files within files at my office and in my computers?

Everything orderly. Everything labeled. All must fit into a category. A place for everything and everything in its place.

Timetables, schedules, agendas — everything and every day mapped out.

And then I rebel. I ignore this orderly world I’ve created. I’m messy and refuse to wash the dishes or I sling my clothes over the bedroom chair. Then, I’m remorseful and scurry around and be a good boy and put everything aright, chastising myself for my failings and foibles.

I procrastinate and destroy my careful mapping out of the day. Then, toss and turn and grind my teeth that night.

Oh, if you only knew how imperfect I can be! But, I hide that from you as best I can. Like Nixon, I cover up my crimes with conspiracies of silence.

Pennywise but pound foolish, I am plotting out the re-arrangement of my CD collection while my checkbook hasn’t been balanced in an age and I can’t quite figure out how to send out regular bills to my clients.

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds, don’t you know.

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