I Miss You When I Blink: Essays(5)

Bad guys on TV also like to choose weapons that can be traced: a bullet from a specific gun, a knife with a telltale blade pattern, poison that leaves a chemical residue. Are they trying to get arrested? Do they not even want to do a good job? You’d think this would be a situation where somebody would take the time to check their work.



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This line of thinking is why I’ve decided to quit watching crime shows and police procedurals before bedtime.

Every time I do, I stay awake for hours walking through the crime, planning how I’d have done it better, what weapon I’d have chosen. Not because I have plans to kill anyone—no, no, I’m the kind of person who rescues earthworms from sidewalks when the sun comes out after a rainstorm—but because I can’t see a problem without trying to solve it. Even problems I don’t have, problems that couldn’t possibly have less to do with me, like how to pull off a well-organized, shipshape, evidence-free murder.



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My name is Mary Laura, and I am addicted to getting things right.



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All of us have some prevalent personality trait, no matter what other qualities we possess. There’s always one ingredient that flavors everything else about us. The cilantro, if you will.

For me, it’s my type A nature. I became aware of this label as a preteen, when a sixth-grade science teacher walked past my tidy desk and remarked offhandedly, “You’re a little type A, aren’t you?” I took note of her comment, keen to think she meant I was an A student. Over time, as I heard it more and more, I came to realize that being “type A” doesn’t mean you’re a grade A human being—it means you have a certain set of high-strung tendencies.

Back in the 1950s, a couple of cardiologists named Meyer Friedman and Ray Rosenman coined the term to describe people who were extraordinarily driven by work, more ambitious, competitive, and time-focused than most other people. They theorized that type A people, unlike their more naturally relaxed type B counterparts, had a higher risk of heart disease. (As it turned out, they were partially right. Research eventually proved a link between heart attacks and high levels of unreleased stress, and as all of us type A people can tell you, unreleased stress is what we have pulsing through our veins.) Nowadays the term is thrown around casually to mean anyone who’s a stickler for timeliness, someone who fixates on perfection. In search of that perfection, some type A folks see other people as competitors in everything they do. Others (like me) compete constantly with themselves, always trying to beat their own personal best. Type A people also crave information, so that we can always be ready with the right answer in any scenario.

Thus my need to know how to plan the perfect murder.



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When you know your own tendencies, you can come up with workarounds to navigate daily life with fewer pitfalls. For example, I love reading magazines, but I’ve learned to save them for when I’m traveling. If I’m already stuck in an airport, it’s not as much of a time loss when I blow an hour poring over pieces like “Nine Tips for a Stronger Golf Swing” and “Three Signs Your Cat May Be Depressed,” which I shouldn’t be reading anyway, because I don’t golf or have a cat. Do I suspect someone’s going to walk into a crowd and yell, “Help! My drives aren’t making it down the fairway, and it’s making my cat sad. What should I do?” and I’ll be the one with the knowledge to save the day? I don’t know. But that folly is best left for time that’s already wasted.



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I scrutinize minutiae as if I’m preparing for a test, and to me, everything in life is a test. Fill in the blank: The right job is _____. The right way to be a friend is _____. The right parenting style is _____. The right way to handle anxiety over whether or not I’m right about everything is _____.

This need to succeed comes out in silly ways—like when I take part in little private contests throughout the day, just so I can pat myself on the back: When I turn the page in a book, I give myself a split second to guess the first word on the next page. I also pretend there’s an app in my bathroom mirror that’s scoring me on how symmetrically I apply eyeliner to both eyes. I’ve done this stuff for as long as I can remember. As a kid, I ate my way around a plate as if someone might stop the clock any second and judge me based on how evenly I’d consumed the different food groups in my meal. (Three bites of egg, three bites of bagel, three bites of strawberry.) Teenage-me imagined I was being filmed in my closet, giving an interview about my organizational skills; I won imaginary prizes for keeping my shoes so neat. Dial back to any point on my timeline, and there I am, a contestant in a game show no one else can see.

I’m making it sound like being this way is fun, like it’s a hilarious quirk, but to be clear: It’s also miserable. I hate that I can’t relax. I wish I didn’t have a to-do list in my peripheral vision at all times.

It’s an exhausting way to live, but try as I might, I can’t turn it off. My brain seeks tasks to check off, i’s to dot and t’s to cross (not to mention x’s to slash, e’s to loop, and z’s to zag), the way a sort-of-but-not-really reformed smoker sucks in a deep lungful of nicotine when walking past a crowd of smokers outside a bar. Like any high-functioning addict, I have learned to sneak a hit wherever I can. When the pediatrician gives me my kids’ growth charts, I look for the percentages first. When the water meter guy handed me a report with our latest meter reading, I scanned it for a score and asked, “Is this good?” I can sustain a buzz for hours after anyone tells me that something I’ve done was “the best”—even if it’s just a colleague at the bookstore where I work saying, “Hey, Mary Laura, you’re the best at changing the toilet paper roll in the employee bathroom.” Bam. Better than a shot of tequila.