Folding paper and self-respect

As I face the new year, I have to admit one horrible weakness. I don't do origami.

This is a fact I've known for years - since my childhood in Japan. I've just been ashamed to admit it publicly. But now, for my own psychological health, I need to get it out and come out of the closet: I'm a sloppy Japanese, and my origami problem is just a reflection of this lapse.

I know, I know - it's a shocking disappointment. Perhaps I should be disowned, or shunned from the Japanese community. I am precise and tidy in many ways, such as making the bed (being raised as a former military brat and years of being yelled at trained me to fold and tuck sheets and blankets if not paper) or cleaning my room (I don't actually clean, but I am very good at "straightening out" - putting things in tidy little stacks and hiding other things away in desks, under the bed or in the closet). I wash dishes right away after cooking or dining. I like to do my laundry weekly instead of letting it go until I run out of clothes. I even enjoy running the vacuum, although I do stop at enjoying washing the windows.

But the signs are all about me that I'm not what I appear to be.

When I was a young boy, I loved assembling plastic models of cars, airplanes, submarines, even monster figures. But my fingers, though slender and nimble, acted as if I was wearing mittens when it came to using the model cement needed to glue the pieces together. Every seam had gloppy blobs of glue oozing out, which I often simply smeared to even out. Any piece of plastic that was clear - such as the windshield of a car, for instance - invariably had cloudy smudges of glue obscuring them.

Painting the models was a whole other challenge - I dripped colors where they were not supposed to go; different sections overlapped each other; and colors got mixed together where they met to make a muddy mess. My models were never much to look at, even though I had fun making them. In retrospect, I can see that I was training myself to go to art school for my BFA, where I could happily throw paint on huge canvases with abandon and know that the sloppiness was part of the point of the artwork.

My penchant for sloppy painting has followed me into adulthood. I hate house-painting, but when forced to take out the buckets and brushes and rollers, I am actually very fast at it. That's because I use lots of paint in every swish of the brush and dip of the roller - so much so that I often get more paint dripped on myself than on the walls. Because I understand my weaknesses, I'm careful to use plenty of plastic sheets and drop-cloths on the floor and any nearby furniture so I won't get into trouble splattering paint anywhere other than myself.

There are many other ways that I display my inherent sloppiness. For instance, I don't care if I dress in mismatched clothes ("I like how the colors clash!"), and I hate to iron my shirts ("Wrinkles are still in style, aren't they?").

But the surest sign of my inherent sloppiness has been my lifelong inability to fold origami paper and make the shapes that every Japanese seems genetically able to make.

I could fold and follow directions with the best students in my classes, but my end results were always off. The white side of the paper showed from seams, and the edges showed crumpled wrinkles from where I impatiently forced a fold instead of making it properly. One wing might end up shorter than the other, or the entire piece would be off-center and lean precariously to one side.

Because of the trauma of being origami-challenged as a child, I've studiously avoided origami as an adult.

Yet every year, I'm reminded how bad I am at the art of folding paper. The annual ordeal of wrapping Christmas presents for family and friends brings out the fear, embarrassment and frustration from decades ago.

I am so embarrassed by the process that I usually do my wrapping either late at night or very early in the morning, when I am alone in my misery. I hide in a dark corner of the basement, with my packages on one side and the various rolls of shiny colorful wrapping paper and the instruments of my self-torture - tape, scissors, gift tags to place on the wrapped presents - laid out within reach on the other side.

True to my past, the first batch of gifts I wrapped and placed under the tree upstairs turned out as they have done for years: the wrapping paper pattern didn't match where they met, the corners of the boxes poked out where I pulled too tight and tore the paper; folds were irregular and wrinkled from being forced; and the ends of the boxes, which should be where the perfectly folded triangular flaps meet in the middle, were all without fail off-center, lopsided, akimbo, screwy, and generally hilarious, as if a drunken person had taped these monstrosities together.

Then, Erin came to the rescue. Seeing my distress and utter shame, she showed me how she very precisely wrapped all her gifts. Sure, it takes more time, but the results don't look like Frankenstein's monster mauled the packages. She patiently showed me that my first mistake was that I didn't have straight edges on my rolls of paper. Because I haphazardly cut the paper by eye, I was starting every package with the handicap of an irregularly-shaped piece of gift-wrap. She showed me how to accurately and easily measure how much paper to use, and how to fold the seams so jagged edges never show.

Then, she showed me the crowning nugget of knowledge for gift-wrapping - how to fold the ends so a multitude of origami sins wouldn't show.

I ended up this year wrapping gifts with Erin instead of in the solitude of my shame. The gifts I wrapped looked good - not quite as sharp as the ones she did, but proud to be under the same tree.

I may even try my hands at origami in the coming new year.