I recently had a much needed catch up lunch with my girlfriends. It's been a long time between drinks, so we had a lot to cover in the space of a few hours. There were some very serious and sad topics and girly fluff to touch on as well.
It was also the first time I told my best friends that I'm writing. That was a big event for me because I'd been a closet writer for so long. They were, as I'd expect, excited and supportive.
We got through our information sharing bit by bit and with a lot of digression, over delicious share plates and utterly drinkable wine. And we laughed, the kind of laughter that makes you look around the room apologetically when you come up for air. We laughed the most about pegs and dishwashers.
Yep, that's right. Pegs. You see, colour-coding pegs is a thing. I've been aware of this for a while, because I used to have a problem. I found myself hanging out the washing with pegs that matched the colour of the clothing. Red pegs for red shirts; blue pegs for blue jeans and so on. Mine was the Kikki K of washing lines. Of course, sometimes I didn't have an appropriate coloured peg, so my inner artist would, with a very audible huff, find complimentary or neutral coloured pegs to complete the job. Or I'd shove that rogue item into the dryer and walk away.
When children came along, the amount of washing became unimaginable and when I returned to work, I realised that spending an additional 15 minutes per load on colour-coding HAD TO STOP. So I trained myself out of that Virgo inspired habit.
What I've come to realise in the past week though, is that I was not alone. I was never alone!
Because, I repeat, colour-coding pegs is a thing!
There were 7 of us at lunch but the peg stories were countless. It seems that if you're not a peggie, you once were or you know one. There are peggies who match to the colour of the clothing, there are peggies who store pegs in separate baskets based on their colour AND strength (far out, it's exhausting just thinking about it) and there are peggies who will only use one colour on their line, rendering the remaining pegs in any packet useless, (except for, you know, building long, unstable, unreliable swords).
One girlfriend confessed to being a peggie but admitted that, like me, she quit her habit and has been clean for years now. Another staged an intervention to assist her own mother who's peg-thing was going too far and there was even reports of a known peggie who, if I heard correctly, had a separate peg basket for the grandchildren to play with so as not to interfere with her "real pegs".
There I was, nervous about disclosing my secret writing habits and BOOM! We're onto pegs. I so readily admitted my earlier peg matching addiction, without fear of judgement or mockery, that I couldn't help but think how ridiculous I was for not previously having the guts to talk about my writing. And it's all in perspective now: who cares if I'm writing or if I'm any good? I understand pegs. And that's where we're at.
Oh, I almost forgot. Dishwasher-cutlery-basket-arrangement is also a thing.
Do you know a peggie?
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