"NEAT PEOPLE VERSUS SLOPPY PEOPLE" BY
SUZANNE BRIT For all these noble reasons and
more, sloppy people never get neat. They aim
too high and wide. They save everything,
planning someday to file, order, and straighten
out the world. But while these ambitious plans
take clearer and clearer shape in their heads,
the books spill from the shelves onto the floor,
the clothes pile up in the hamper and closet, the
family mementos accumulate in every drawer,
the surface of the desk is buried under mounds
of paper and the unread magazines threaten to
reach the ceiling. Sloppy people can't bear to
part with anything. They give loving attention to
every detail. When sloppy people say they're
going to tackle the surface of the desk, they
really mean it. Not a paper will go unturned; not
a rubber band will go unboxed. Four hours or
two weeks into the excavation, the desk looks
exactly the same, primarily because the sloppy
person is meticulously creating new piles of
papers with new headings and scrupulously
stopping to read all the old book catalogs
before he throws them away. A neat person
would just bulldoze the desk. Neat people are
bums and clods at heart. They have cavalier
attitudes toward possessions, including family
heirlooms. Everything is just another dust-
catcher to them. If anything collects dust, it's got
to go and that's that. Neat people will toy with
the idea of throwing the children out of the
house just to cut down on the clutter. Neat
people don't care about process. They like
results. What they want to do is get the whole
thing over with so they can sit down and watch
the rasslin' on TV. Neat people operate on two unvarying principles: Never handle any item twice, and throw everything away.
This text is:
A) compare & contrast
B) defining/definition
C) narrative/story telling
D) description
E) process/procedure