I sat here folding laundry this morning, acutely aware of the fact that I (unlike certain people I know) am uncommonly fussy about how I fold my socks.
I learned years ago as a child that I strongly dislike having my socks rolled into a ball; especially when one takes one of the socks and arbitrarily stretches it over the other one!
Maybe it’s just me, People, but I find it’s kinda dorky to have one sock nicely staying put around your ankle/calf and the other one fully stretched-out and whimsically flapping in the breeze around your shoe – all because someone indiscriminately stretched it out while “balling it up” when they did your laundry.
And I realize I’m dating myself here, but it kinda reminds me of Pippi Longstocking (9-year-old protagonist of Astrid Lindgren’s “The New Adventures of Pippi Longstocking”) – not exactly a look I particularly liked as a child nor one that I desire at this age.
(My tromping around in a blue rubber rain suit with barn boots has already given my neighbors cause for questioning my sanity. Walking around looking like Pippi Longstocking would just be another good reason for being “picked up by that little white van and whisked away to that special laughing academy!”)
I continue pulling laundry out of my laundry basket and aimlessly start to fold my sheets, when I gradually begin to wonder how the hell the Princess gets the bottom fitted sheet so nice and squarely folded?
I then decide, “To hell with it! Rolling up my socks is one thing, but having a rolled up bottom sheet is another! Who the hell cares if the bottom sheet is rolled up or not?!”
Yeah, well, the Princess does – that’s who.
(My logic says, “No one really sees the dam thing, so what’s the big deal, for Pete’s sake?”)
Unlike my Mother, her Mother painstakingly taught her the correct way to fold a bottom sheet; and nowhere in the directions did it entail rolling it up and haphazardly folding it into a triangular lump.
My Mother, on the other hand, felt that you should fastidiously iron your sheets (along with your beat-up jeans and threadbare corduroys), but nowhere on her list of Motherly sagacious suggestions and mordant mandates were any expert directions on how to fold the bottom sheet a certain way.
I then began thinking about all of our idiosyncratic, endearing behaviors and started to wonder, “How the hell do such different people even end up with each other? And how, pray tell, do they actually stay together for the long haul?”
My sister-in-law once commented that she and my brother Anthony almost ended up in a divorce (30 years ago) after one month of marriage because they ran outta toilet paper!
Now just why in God’s creation it was her sole responsibility to make sure they had an abundance of t.p. every week, I don’t know. But she said that once she learned to keep a sufficient stock of toilet paper on hand, and also made sure that there was some kind of specialty bread served with their dinner every evening (God forbid it should be some kind of sickening, marshmallowy white bread like Wonder Bread), their marriage was on solid ground from that point forward.
(I’m sure my three beautiful, enjoying-life-to-the fullest nieces are all eternally grateful for their Mom’s “taking one for the team” 30 years ago!)
Anyway, People, I think when it comes right down to it, we can choose to go through life and compromise with each other, or we can acquiesce and do things the right way – MY WAY!
In the meantime, be careful how you fold your socks and sheets this week…you (unknowingly) might be driving your significant other batty!
Catch ya’ next week for another glimpse of looking at life from my shoes.
Life in Lucie's Shoes 