Twitchy personality?

BOSTON Did you turn off the coffee pot before leaving the house? How about the iron? And is the security alarm on? There are two basic responses to such questions: a confident "yes," or a tentative "I think so." The "yes" people will answer quickly, maybe throw in an "absolutely" for emphasis and move on to the more pressing matters of their lives without looking back..
The "I think so" people are a lot more entertaining, for they are capable of chewing on the problem for hours. They can also work themselves into an anguished "Why did you have to ask me that?" which might lead to a trip home for confirmation that a cold coffee pot, or iron, had indeed been switched off..
Strange how the mind stumbles on these small, nagging bits of business. People with executive jobs, who pride themselves on being able to handle constellations of complex details at once, can experience what might be called "the coffee pot syndrome" as readily as absent-minded professors..
It's primarily a matter of synapses and how the brain waves happen to be doing with the retrieval of trivia on a particular day..
But the twitchy personality can't relax with any margin of error and has been known to make the drive home on what starts out as a 90 percent certainty rate, which dwindles to zip as the imagination goes wild with frayed cords, leaping cats, power surge sparks and melted heating elements..
The twitchy personality has also been known to pace around a mailbox waiting for the postman to show up and solve the conundrum of the stamp - is it, or is it not, on the envelope just dropped into the slot?.
On those days when the mind is busy with other things - the coffee pot, iron or security alarm, perhaps - clarity is lost, and one fears that the mail might be, too..
At such moments it might be comforting for the twitch to embrace the wisdom of Franklin D. Roosevelt and understand that fear is often a bigger problem than the presumed problem..
But there is also peace of mind in accepting who one is, whether twitchy or confident, and in knowing that there is no wrong answer to the question of exactly how many devils might reside in those seemingly insignificant details..
The writer is a member of the editorial board of The Boston Globe.

This certainly strikes a cord with me. Does it with you? Do you at times fall into the twitchy personality mode?