When I was young, I was bone-lazy. I had to be tossed out of bed every morning and forced into getting dressed to haul myself off to the Hell of Tedium that was school. When I got older, we discovered circadian clocks and it turned out that I was a "night person" and not bone-lazy at all.

When I was young, I was irresponsible. I had to be forced to put down my latest book and do my chores or, really, anything else and even when so forced, I wandered through the world in an unconnected daze. Now, of course, we know I have some kind of slight psychological disorder, the fancy term for which I don't know, that makes the world(s) inside my head more "real" to me than the physical world around me.

When I was young, I was stubborn as a pig. While rarely resorting to verbal rebellion, I was a champion at refusing to do anything I didn't feel like doing. Like eating stuffed green peppers. I'd sit at the dinner table for an hour or more after everyone else had gone on to other things, refusing to acknowledge the existence of the congealing mass on my plate. "One bite," my mother would coax. Gandhi had nothing on me when it came to passive resistance.

When I was young, I was stupid. I never did my homework and paid no attention at all in class. How I managed to get through school without failing was a mystery to us all. Nowadays we know that instead of skipping ahead one grade, I should have been skipped two or three. I would be "gifted" in today's world, not a disaster waiting to happen.

When I was young, I was shy. I found it difficult to make friends or to respond to overtures from others. In these more enlightened times, I have a social disorder.

So, you know. It's all very pretty and euphemistic today, but I'm still bone-lazy, irresponsible, stupid, shy, and stubborn as a pig.

Yesterday, in email, a friend related to me the story of her sister's friend.

"She lives in Present Time. It's a new age concept which means you live 100% in the present, so you're not thinking about the past or the future at all, ever."

This, you see explains why said sister's friend's electricity stopped working. She opened her bills, looked at them, and never remembered to pay them.

That really sounds like me. I generally have a huge stack of "papers to be dealt with" sitting on my desk at home. I sort through them and throw away the trash or file the "important stuff" a couple of times a year. In between times, I never think about what might be in the pile.

I've arranged to have most of my bills paid automatically, online, so I don't have to think about them. (My auto insurance doesn't offer that, so I have to remember to write them checks. When I don't, I have trouble like I'm having now. Which, I should say, has never happened in quite this fashion before.)

But, like my friend's sister's friend, bills tend to disappear from my consciousness as soon as I see them.

This is largely why all of the Mutual Bills the R.C. and I get in the apartment? Come directly to her and are paid by her. I write her checks once or twice a month to cover my share. (Forgetting to write her checks is also how I've gotten in debt to her.)

I mean well. I mean to be organized and conscientious and responsible and stuff. It's just that--bills and financial papers and bank statements and those types of matters don't make a big impression on my brain.

I'd like to blame it on Present Time Disorder, but when I realize that the things I care about, the things that matter to me, rarely disappear from my brain that way, it reveals that I don't have PTD.

I'm irresponsible. I'm not saying I'm happy with it, or that it doesn't sometimes cause me problems. It's just that, to-date, the costs of ignoring reality have been worth it.

At least they were, until Monday. Monday's cost alone was $100. Now it turns out that this little lapse in insurance coverage is also going to cost me an additional $132/year for my policy.

It's getting a little expensive to be me.