Fabric Softener

You live with someone for over twenty years, and then all of a sudden they change on you. That’s right, my wife recently started adding fabric softener to the towel loads! Do you have any idea what fabric softener does to a perfectly good functional towel? Well if you’ve never experienced the horror of it, I’ll tell you. It turns what was once a useful drying cloth into a plush piece of material as soft as a baby’s butt, and just as absorbent. Think about it …if baby’s butts were absorbent they wouldn’t need diapers would they? So here I am, soaking wet in front of the shower trying to dry myself off with the cotton equivalent of an infant’s behind when my wife says “Aren’t those towels soft?” “What the... what did you do, spray them with Scotchgard?” I asked “All I’m doin’ is pushing water around over here!” “...But aren’t they soft?” she continued. “Yeah, soft as a butterfly’s wing” I said “But they’re ruined!! …er, I mean yes dear, they’re very soft.”

Then the next day we’re at the grocery store, so I sneak over to the cleaning section and ask the guy stocking the shelves “Hey, do you have any fabric unsoftener?” He said “Aren’t you the guy who was looking for a stud finder finder a few weeks ago?” “Yeah, that was me …hey, you used to work over at Home Depot, right?” “Yeah, used to” he said, then he started looking real edgy “I got fired for calling a customer a moron!” “Oh, sorry to hear that” I said “but about the fabric unsoftener…” Then he started turning bright red, so I said ”Never mind, I’ll go look for it myself.” Just then my wife came around the corner, and tossed a jug of fabric softener into the cart.

As it turns out, a lot of things I need haven’t been invented yet, so until technology catches up with my lifestyle, I’m keeping a small pile of scratchy absorbent towels separate from the rest of the laundry.