Poor Mary is dealing with the plague of the disorganized seventh-grade boy. I almost said that she was dealing with the curse of such a child but, as Kat's mother, I know that disorganization tends to be more of a plague. Disorganization, unfortunately, tends to be contagious. I've almost caught it from Kat or Mr. Philately more than once.

But I have the cure for Mary's problem within my household if I were ready to part with her. I just learned the fate of Day's Latin partner. It seems that Day's Latin teacher has paired up her students to do certain projects together and Day has been paired with a terribly disorganized boy. Day says that he is not only disorganized, but also lost. As a result, she is doing most of the work and, she says, if she is going to do most of the work, he is going to do his part and not lose his part of the work�if it kills him and it just might. Day has approached the problem with an eye toward making it easier for herself. She has taken to organizing the lost boy.

Apparently, he could not find his copy of their project last week. Did she yell? No. Did she cajole? No. Did she panic? No. Instead, she did what a Day does when confronted with chaos in her way. She became a Force to be Reckoned With. She made him dump out his entire backpack and helped him sort all of the papers, not just the Latin papers, into piles and place the correct papers in the correct folders. And she did not do it just once. As near as I can tell, she is making him dump his folder and sort every few days if not every day. (The poor boy had a reprieve on Wednesday because Day was off on a field trip.)

It reminds me of the year that Kat was in third grade and Day was in kindergarten. Back in those days, I would come into the school every few weeks, supposedly to help Kat with her disorganized desk. But I would do amazingly little of the work. Day did most of it. Day would make piles�books here, supplies there, papers here. She would separate the "number papers" (in other words, the math papers) from the other papers. She would hand Kat papers one-by-one. "Sashi," she would say sternly (for the child who currently is known as Kat was once known as Sasha). "What is this?" If Kat could not come up with a reasonable answer, she would be directed to throw it away. If it were social studies or language arts, it had to go into its folder. Day was not reading but she understood color coding even then and remembered the colors of Kat's folders (which was more than Kat seemed capable of doing.)

And so, I think, Day could come and organize Mary's middle child. There would be only one drawback for Mary that I could see. She might just have enough spare time to organize Mary too.

But then I have survived so maybe it would be okay. For Mary, that is. As for me, she's a white tornado but she's my white tornado.

And it's nice having a kindred spirit around sometimes.

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