When I first heard of this activity, I was watching a movie of some kind. But it could also have been an episode of Are You Being Served. Every time I heard this line, it seemed comical, and meant as a joke or an excuse. I couldn't imagine that someone would actually plan to have a sit down and rearrange his sock drawer (it was always men who said they were going to do this).

Then I got married.

Guess what I've been doing the past hour!

Since I got married the order in which I kept my sock drawer, has been compromised, time and again. Socks disappear, socks of different pairs were folded together, resulting in a twofold amount of mismatched socks. In all my life I lived as a single, there was never any need to rearrange my sock drawer because all my socks were kept in shoe boxes, neatly categorized by color and thickness as well as height, and arranged in rows. I could always instantly see which socks I had at my disposal, and for the most part also which socks I didn't. Same with shorts.

The disarrangement of this combined drawer became a reality of living together. This meant I could not see at a glance how many clean shorts were still available to me, and which socks. And just as with nuts and bolts that you haven't stored in a place where you can easily find them again, if a shortage of some kind appears, you buy new. And so it happened that my sock drawer became fuller and fuller, resulting in an even harder job finding a specific pair of socks, or a specific model of shorts.

Now I rearranged the drawer for the first time since we've moved here, I'm left with more than half a dozen single socks and a surplus of shorts. Several of them I could throw away because they have been inactive so long the elastic band has disintegrated, rendering them unwearable.

So you see, there is a reason for order, also in sock drawers. Is it a feminine thing to ignore this order? Or is it an autistic thing to keep this order? I don't think so. Remember the movies and tv-series in which it was mentioned. But for an autistic person the disarray in a sock drawer leads to a feeling of disarray. Something simple as getting a pair of socks of shorts, becomes unnecessarily complicated and starts my day slightly flustered.

I think it is a feminine thing not to be able to anticipate this order, to obey it and keep it. Women are just naturally sloppy, I guess. From all my romantic dealings with women I have also learned they are not romantic at all. They just think they are. And so, through the years, I have come to adjust my perception of women. Not always to my delight, I must admit. Sometimes you need a breather.

Do something on your own and be able to define your masculinity again.

Something like.... rearranging your sock drawer.