Roll Up the Plastic

Audio By Carbonatix

I won’t tell you how I was related to Gerald and Loretta (those are not their real names), but I’ll assure you I was, because if I hadn’t seen their story unfold in living color myself, I wouldn’t believe it either. In introducing you to Gerald and Loretta, the place to begin is plastic, I think—long, clear runners covering most of the floors throughout their house. Loretta had the plastic laid to keep the house dirt free. That was her strategy behind everything, it seemed: a sterile home at any cost. The people who were approved for entry to the house weren’t allowed to stray from the plastic once inside, and they had to take off their shoes outside the front door.

Over time, what was already an obsession with keeping out dirt got worse, and Loretta’s house rules became more restrictive. Over time, most of her visitors were paranoid that they’d track a speck of dirt into the home and ruin her spotless ideal. Eventually even Loretta’s own family couldn’t relax in their own home—because by then, the plastic rules applied to them too. And that’s how this little story took its first interesting turn.

Loretta’s husband Gerald, all but banished from the house along with any traces of dirt on his feet, started to spend time in the garage. It was the perfect getaway for him—a space detached from the house, with no clear plastic in sight. So, Gerald decided to spruce up the place. He renovated a bit and added a fireplace. And the cozier it got, the more time he spent in the garage. Soon he even began eating his meals and sleeping out there. It was detached like that for a while—the wife in the house, the husband in the garage—until Loretta began to like Gerald’s new lifestyle. In fact, the freedom he’d found appealed to her so much that she began spending time in the garage with him.

Not long after that, Loretta moved out of the house and in with her husband, and they lived in the garage together like that for as long as I can remember, next to a big empty home where plastic still covered the floors. And really, isn’t that how it happens with people? If you would’ve sat down with Gerald and Loretta on their wedding day and painted a picture of how their life together would end up, those two would have told you that you were crazy.

But with silly decision after silly decision, they looped around into a crazy life of their own, pushing people out and moving out, never once stopping to take back any of the foolishness. How about you? Have you been laying plastic in any areas of your life? Or are you settling into a garage somewhere? Have you kept people out of your life because of something so trivial as dirt on the carpet? Are you staying away from those you love because it’s just easier like this?

If you’re making decisions like Loretta and Gerald did, it’s probably time you realize the foolishness in it. It’s probably time to roll up the plastic and go back in the house together. It might be more difficult this way, but it will be worth whatever effort it takes—pardon the pun, but you can’t win at home if you’re living in the garage.