Lines & Rows

Rows of corn and beans popping up all over Iowa has brought to my attention how many things around us come in or form rows: eggs in an egg carton, vegetables in a garden, coffee drinkers at Starbucks, days on a calendar, cars in a parking lot, cans of peaches on a shelf at Fareway, lines on a ruler... I mean our entire world is mapped out by longitude and latitude lines, is it not? And while it is quite obvious that all these things come in lines or rows because it is the most efficient and effective way to do things, it scares me to think that perhaps our world is restricted by these lines as well.

Order is all around us, molding us, shaping us, telling us right from wrong. And not just in lines and rows, but in signs and arrows and alphabetazation and piles and the Dewey Decimal System. It's like it's not okay to freak out every once in a while: step out of line, go down a one-way street backwards, place the Y file in front of the Z, throw those peaches on the shelf without stacking or straightening them. But I feel like it would be almost empowering to do so, to break the line... like you are defying the ways of the universe! And it wouldn't be in order to piss anyone off by budging in line or not piling up your laundry, but just so you feel like you have some control over your own life, like you make the rules...

Otherwise, you are just contantly following directions, walking in order, standing in line... And please tell me, right now, where the world would be if people like Albert Einstien and Alexander Graham Bell and George Washington Carver always stayed in line? We'd be stuck in time, probably... reading a book by candlelight, stuck in the middle of nowhere without a phone, or eating a PB&J without the peanut butter... and that would just be boring!