The Messy Gene

During my career I’ve seen a fair number of, what I refer to as, “bad gene pools.”

In the two decades I spent as a criminal defense lawyer, I represented a number of defendants who seemed genetically unable to stay out of trouble.

During the almost two decades I spent as a judge in county court, I encountered the children and even grandchildren of people that I had represented early in my career.

Recently, however, I have become a believer in the theory that there is a “messy” gene.

I clearly possess such a gene.

I can live and work in the messiest, chaotic conditions.

At least one of my siblings, my brother Chuck, possessed it at one time. I can still recall sharing a bedroom with him and every Saturday morning my mother would pound on the door and demand that we clean our room. Chuck would lean against the door, holding it shut until she gave up in frustration and went away.

When I was in elementary school one of the nuns made me bring my father to school so she could show him how messy my desk was.

There was nothing more terrifying at the time than having to bring my father to school.

He came to the classroom, looked at the desk and told me to try and keep it neater.

I realized later that he had given me a pass because he realized I had inherited the gene from him.

Once, when I was in college at the University of Tennessee, my younger sister Jane came to visit. She was in the apartment for about half an hour, when she said, “Don’t you think you could have cleaned a little bit before I got here?’

“We’ve been cleaning for two weeks,” I replied. She seemed to take it in stride and we had a nice visit.

One of my earliest clients recalled my cubicle at the legal aid society. “You had these two huge piles of files several feet high on your desk,’ he told me. “I was always amazed that you never lost anything. You’d reach into the pile and pull out whatever we needed.”

That, of course, was the trick.

When I was in private practice, my law partner, Chris Wiles declared that I couldn’t buy a sofa for my office “because you’ll just pile things on it.” Eventually, he relented.

Two weeks after it was delivered, it was piled high.

Once while interviewing a prospective client, he looked at the several hundred pink telephone messages scattered across the floor of my office. At the end of the interview, he said to me, “I’d really like to have you represent me but I have one question. Did you call any of these people back?” “Most of them,” I answered.

There was the occasional puzzling moment, when I would open a client’s file and the client would give me a quizzical look about the shoe print that was on a letter in the file. For the most part, the gene didn’t interfere with my practice.

The gene manifested itself during the nineteen years I was in County Court.

My friend and colleague, Bill Walsh, was the opposite. He was a true neat freak. I think it was a carryover from his military career. There was a certain Felix and Oscar quality to our friendship.

In his final year on the bench, he said to me, “You should move into my office when I leave, it’s larger.”

“Are you kidding me,” I replied, “I’d have to run for another term just to get packed up for the move.” I stayed where I was.

Every couple of years, my staff would organize everything while I was on vacation. For months, I couldn’t find anything and was afraid to look. At the end, I started packing about six months before my retirement date. I just barely made it.

Last weekend my four-year-old granddaughter was out for dinner with my daughter, Meghan.

“I’d like to see my room,” she announced. “Her room” has the closets and bureaus where my clothes are kept.

Before she and Meghan went down to it, I forewarned, “It’s kind of messy.”

They disappeared for about ten minutes. When she came back up, she marched over to me, looked me in the eye and hissed, “Clean it up!”

Over dinner, she announced that she would like to come out for a sleepover soon.

Since those are very precious times, I’m happy to report that the room is now neat as a pin.