Messy room has benefits, but not as many as happy mom

By most people’s standards, I should be in bed right now. Instead, I’m trying desperately to… By most people’s standards, I should be in bed right now. Instead, I’m trying desperately to write a column that I should have written, you know, before the day of the deadline. I have an excuse for said desperation: My mother is coming.

It doesn’t seem like a powerful reason, I know, and it’s not nearly as compelling as if I were to have yelled “The British are coming!” or “Godzilla is coming!” In that spirit, let me amend that statement: My mother is coming-up to my room.

Anyone who’s seen my room will appreciate the gravity of my situation. For the rest of the world, let me explain: “Cleaning my room” is a pretty fluid concept, and usually the extent of it is wiping a glob of ketchup off my keyboard.

I have managed to achieve – and it only took six months to do it – the quintessential college dorm room. It’s not the kind that you would find in the Pitt recruitment brochures. There’s no well-worn copy of “War and Peace” on my desk, no blue and gold comforters or matching pillow cases and there are certainly no inspirational posters adorning my wall, unless a “Spiderman” action shot counts.

Nope. Beneath the unwashed dishes, dirty clothes and stacks of junk, the microbes in my room are – I’m pretty sure about this – evolving into the unknown. And today, with the impending arrival of mummy dearest, I spent the day scrubbing the room clean.

So I’m messy. A lot of people are, though unfortunately for him, my roommate isn’t one of them. Still, it’s pretty amazing how much my dorm room became a part of my college experience. “College experience” is a pretty loose term, too, as I’m still a freshman, and therefore have no foundation to make such a statement. But still, a messy room is an experience, and useful, too.

Consider:

Friend: Wanna hang out?

Ravi: Sorry, man. I have to clean my room – just look at it!

The dirty room excuse absolutely blows the “I have a huge test coming up” excuse out of the water. Only a nerd will study on Friday nights; it’s a well-known excuse – but who can blame someone for trying to improve his living conditions?

While moderately successful in warding off unwanted friendships, it is absolutely ironclad when it comes to avoiding work:

Lab partner: Hey, could you type this up by Friday? I’m really swamped this week.

Ravi: Just look at this – my life is a mess right now!

The whole “messy room” vs. “my life is a mess” analogy is the most powerful one found in nature, especially when combined with wild gestures to drive the point home. The mere sight of 30 unwashed dishes towering precipitously on my desk will induce enough guilt to absolve me of any responsibility.

A particular favorite application of this is extended borrowing, also known as keeping other people’s stuff.

Lender: Can I have the $5 I lent you?

Ravi: Sure, let me get my wallet.

Who, I ask, can withstand a 10-minute laundry shuffle? This works particularly well when I have pants in random areas of the room. At this point, most people will just tell me to forget about it. Just for fun, I’ll sometimes start looking behind particularly revolting dinnerware or in piles of dirty socks, and then ask them to help me look for it. It works every time.

But by far, the best part of a meticulously messy room is looking intelligent. It is a well known fact that Einstein invented the flux capacitor when he tripped over his boxers and hit his head off a crusty plate, much as it is known that “San Diego” is actually Spanish for a whale’s – well, never mind. A messy room can often be skewed as a sign of mental genius. An example:

Person 1: Boy, that Ravi sure is messy.

Person 2: Yeah, but he’s probably so smart that he doesn’t have time to deal with stupid stuff like that.

If I manage to say a few intelligent things – or at least refrain from saying anything stupid – I can come off looking pretty smart.

Still, exposing such a sight to my mother, who once spent a week purging the garage because I told my friends it was messy, would make her unhappy. And I love my mother and hate making her unhappy.

Thus, armed with a box of disinfecting wipes and industrial-strength cleaning detergent, I painstakingly buffed my room to a resounding shine.

I don’t know how I’ll impress the girls now, seeing as the how my genius bad-boy facade is gone – but I heard writing nice articles about your mom works pretty well, too.

Alex, I really cleaned the dishes this time. E-mail Ravi at rrp10@pitt.edu.