Originally published by The Clifton Courier, March 4, 2020

I don’t just do things for no reason.

I play with my hair a lot. It’s usually because I’ve recently washed it, it feels all soft and I want to get lost in its silkiness to escape from the coarseness of my day-to-day life.

I do a lot of clicking of my fingers and drumming of my nails on hard surfaces, but’s not for no reason either. It’s because I have a song in my head and I want to share it with the world. I’m also super annoying and I want to assert my dominance through sound.

I put my honey in tea before I add the milk, because I want it to completely dissolve and be dispersed evenly, so that each mouthful has a balanced ratio of honey, tea and milk. The honey will dissolve better in heat, so adding in cold milk before the honey is not in my best interest. Yes, it’s finicky and controlling, but it’s the laws of chemistry. I can’t go around flouting them and expecting to be rewarded with an optimal cup of tea. That’s not the way the world works.

So when I tell my housemate I keep my esky behind the driver’s seat for good reason, I mean it.

My housemate has borrowed my sweet, sweet ride a few times now, and each time, he removes the esky (note: I actually just had to add the word “esky” to my Microsoft Word dictionary because it kept telling me it was a spelling error) from behind the driver’s seat. But he didn’t return it to the exact spot in which it was purposefully stored.

I’m guessing it’s because he thought it was only there because it just happened to be there.

So I had to explain to him that this was not the case.

I could put it in the boot. There’s ample room in there, even with my swag, towels, emergency picnic rugs, one-person tent, backup green bags and a mini, lunchbox-sized esky in there.

But I prefer it to be right behind the driver’s seat, wedged between the back passenger seat.

For one, it’s an ease of access thing.

I like to put my everyday green bags in the esky so I can quickly grab them when I head into the shops to purchase my extremely necessary grocery items. If the esky wasn’t there, the bags could end up sprawled all over the vehicle. I’d probably forget they were there and run into the shops bagless. This would mean buying another green bag, which I’d chuck in the unknowable void of the back seat, only for it to be forgotten, thus continuing the cycle.  And on and on and on it would go until I’m drowning in a sea of items used to contain other items for a short amount of time (with a renewed sense of sympathy for turtles).

So, yes, the esky has to go there.

But there’s also another element to the esky placement: security.

I have rather short legs. It’s a bit of a family thing. Us Maguires aren’t known for our height (in fact, I don’t know exactly what we Maguires ARE known for, and part of me thinks it’s best I remain in the dark in this regard).

So when I drive, my seat is quite a bit closer to the steering wheel than your average Joe (or Jo, come to think of it).

This means that if someone else tries to drive after me, they have to push the seat back to operate the pedals without snapping a shinbone. But the esky placement prevents that. Pushing the seat back requires a bit of reorganisation in the back seat.

So this means that if a sneaky person attempted to nick my vehicle, they’d be slowed down by my strategic esky placement. I like to think that this would give them a few seconds to reconsider pursuing any further criminal action and give up. Or, in the worst-case scenario, they’d chuck the esky out of the vehicle in their haste and leave it behind for me.

But while that’s all obvious to me, I have to remind myself there are some poor, unfortunate souls out there who don’t think like me.

And so, instead of just saying, “because I know what I’m doing, ok?!” I have to explain myself. It’s quite efficient to explain myself via newspaper than having to go through those multiple times.

Perhaps I’ll tear out this page and tape it to the esky. In which case, please, whoever is reading this, return the esky to where you found it and, if you wouldn’t mind, please don’t steal this vehicle. I’d really appreciate that.