I made them laugh, shared my cookies, and generally was, I thought, a great friend, even if I did leave a trail of stuff in my wake

As told to Devorah Grant

"Ita! Phone for you! Again…” Akiva rolled his eyes as he handed me the cordless, which he’d answered for the fifth time that day. Baruch Hashem I always had a lot of friends. Extroverted and bubbly, with a great sense of humor, I was used to being the center of attention, and honestly, I thrived on it. I got by in my schoolwork, just about, and I’ve never been particularly talented, but friends? Those I always had.

The other thing I always had was a perpetual mess. I’m disorganized by nature, easygoing as they come, and I’m not particularly bothered by heaps of clothing on the floor, or papers or photos (or files or folders, for that matter). Once upon a time my mother used to beg me to pick things up and make my bed each day, exasperated by the sheer chaos as she walked through my bedroom door. But as the years went by, she got fed up nagging, until eventually I was given an ultimatum: Clean up, Ita, or the cleaning lady won’t touch your room. I tried. But not hard enough. And the mess grew bigger….

At that time, I also shared a room, and a cold war, with my sister, Esty. Neat-as-a-pin, my-wardrobe-is-color-coordinated Esty, did not take kindly to my mess. While her shirts stood primly folded like soldiers on her shelf, mine bounced between the end of my bed, the chair, the desk, the floor, and any available surface. While she was up and out the door by 8 a.m. daily, I was still frantically searching through the piles of papers on the carpet to find the homework I was missing. And when she found a pair of my dirty socks on her pillow one evening (how they were both there is a weird miracle), she convinced my parents that either she moved to the guest room, or someone cleaned the room each day, because this was not sustainable.

That night, after a long discussion, Esty moved out of the room.

In school, my seatmates varied from amused to mildly frustrated with my disorganization. Though people liked sitting next to me for my running commentary and entertainment value, my friends would get increasingly exasperated at me for borrowing their possessions because I couldn’t find my own. Still, I made up for it, I felt. I made them laugh, shared my cookies, and generally was, I thought, a great friend, even if I did leave a trail of stuff in my wake. But it could only go so far.