You know how you sit there on the edge of the bed in the morning, half awake, pulling on a pair of socks from a laundry basket full of clean clothes? And a voice says, hey, someone should put all those clean clothes away. After all, that’s why God made dressers and closets.

And you agree, of course, because it’s your own voice and it’s too early in the day to start an internal debate over the nature of being and whose job it is to be putting away the laundry.

Naturally, you have your own theory on who beez responsible and that beez the Queen Bee. Mister King Bee, he be fully involved in making sure the sun rises and sets each day. Or practicing important worst-case-scenario commands like “Warp Speed, Mr. Sulu!” Or possibly finding ways to attract a dozen or so new followers to his blog—bringing the total to somewhere around a dozen or so.

Mr. King Bee, he say “Show me one spare moment in my jam-packed day where I have time to deal with the lowly socks and underwear issues of life.”

Unfortunately, sometimes Mr. King Bee, his mind buzzing with important matters, accidentally asks this question in his outside voice. Within the hearing of Mrs. Queen Bee. She quickly points out—with a recently whittled point—the above referenced one spare moment. It even has a name and that name is Now.

You try to man up, thinking it won’t take five minutes. But that isn’t the point. The point is you just don’t feel like doing it. And in the land of freedom it is written somewhere (I’m pretty sure) that Mr. King Bee should only do what he feels like doing.

Which is why you invented a stratagem for threats to your freedom. You keep it under your hat for emergencies. If you don’t have a hat, cut your losses now. Put the laundry away, go to your cave and kick the Legos.

So. First, take each item from the basket and lay it on your side of the bed. If the item belongs to someone else, carefully pick it up between the tip of your thumb and forefinger. Make a face like a man watching a zombie eat his neighbor. Keep the dangling item as far from your face as possible while extending your arm to the other side of the bed. Release.

You end with two piles of clothes. Yours and that other one. Set the empty basket aside, leave the room and move onto really important things.

One of two things will happen.

One, the next time you go into the bedroom—for your nap, let’s say—the clothes on the other side of the bed are gone. Put away by someone other than yourself. Maybe they were put away with a heavy sigh. Maybe grinding teeth. Maybe both. Hey, life is hard. Sweep your clean clothes into the empty basket. Take your nap, get up and head back to world-saving activities.

Two, federal marshals break into your cave and haul you before a kangaroo court presided over by The Queen Bee. Not good, but look at it this way: you’re still alive and tomorrow is another laundry day.

©Patrick A. McGuire and A Hint of Light 2013-2014, all rights reserved.