Drip Dry

Sometimes I can’t help but wonder what happens to my towels. There are times I think the door to my bathroom leads to some sort of lavatorial Bermuda triangle where terrycloth goes to die.

Today my husband disappeared into the bathroom to take a shower. Seconds later he pried the door open a crack and stuck his head out.

“Have you washed towels lately?”

“Have you shaved your legs lately?”

“I’m not trying to be sexist. I just want to dry off.”

“Yesterday I washed everything that resembled a towel. I even threw in that funny sweater your mother gave you.”

“That’s not terry cloth.”

“Well it’s certainly not made of anything that Mother Nature has to offer.”

The door closed. I heard furtive searching sounds coming from the bathroom closet. Seconds later he peered out of the door crack with one distraught eye.

“What’s the matter?”

“All that’s left is the hooded froggie towel from when the kids were little, and the pink velour with the floral design.”

“Go for the flowers. The frog repels moisture. You can dry on that thing for half an hour and still retain enough water to qualify as a camel.”

Later that night I found six hand towels and a frayed wash cloth drying on the towel rack. I guess he didn’t want to take any chances with the rose buds. I tossed them all in the laundry.

It’s not that we don’t own other towels. If all the terry cloth in our possession were draped across the Atlantic, the ocean would dry up quicker than Bernie Madoff’s revenue streams the day the subpoena surfaced.

But our towels are given to vanishing when emergencies arise. Harry Houdini would have been envious of the sleight of hand towels we’ve experienced.

The day that the Captain of my oil pan kept screaming for something to wipe the dipstick with when he was checking my fluids, the festive holiday guest towels disappeared. The day Son One and Son Two were heard arguing over who was to blame for the massive Fruit Loop spill on the living room shag, the blue velour towels I got for Mother’s Day went missing. The day we adopted the third puppy, I took out stock in cotton futures.

There’s nothing I can do about the towels that are already gone, but there are preventive measures I can take to guard against these towel-thieving guys.

First thing Monday morning, I’m heading to Wal-Mart to snag a buggy full of pink velour towels with a floral design.

If that doesn’t work, I’ll hang the froggie on the towel rack year round and let ‘em drip dry. The living room shag will thank me for it.

Puzzled

I’m puzzled by the studies that show that the way to hang on to the last frayed threads of my mind when they threaten to weave themselves into something resembling the dream sequence on Dallas is to diligently solve the daily crossword. I’ve heard so many stories about synapses saved by a steady diet of crossword puzzles that I’m convinced that the only way to hold on to what’s left of my sanity is to discover the answer to 22 across.

The trouble is that I never finish crossword puzzles. I’m the sort of gal that remembers the name of the person I was supposed to introduce approximately 15 minutes (or six weeks depending on the degree of difficulty) after everyone has left the party anonymously. My guests are known to one another as “that girl in the tacky red dress” or “you know, the man who didn’t shave below his chin,” or “that woman who called me Hortense.” It’s easier for me to fit into last year’s swimsuit than to come up with a word at the right time.

So as I stumble over clue after clue on my daily crossword, I’m troubled by the fact that I’m unable to stave off the inevitable destruction of my little gray cells. Every minute my brow is furrowed, I’m certain that I’m heading downhill faster than a mutt after a meatball, only to find that one night after I’ve peeled open the fast food bags for dinner I remember the four letter word for bacteria. At this rate, I should become senile in another six months. I’d better type faster.

Luckily, there is a new school of thought to bring serenity to the chaos between my ears. Studies show that a simple change in my routine, such as taking a different route home from work, will save more of my mind than puzzles ever did. This is especially good for me because while I’m prone to living in a deeper rut than Hummer tires leave in red mud, it is not at all unusual for me to get lost. On especially good days, it might take three tries to make it to the mailbox. Without too much trouble, I can arrange to find a new way to get to the kitchen every week.

So now I can throw away my GPS, stride confidently from the house, and happily continue to take my wrong turns. And I won’t have to worry about any more cross words.

Guest Post: The Andromedan, Strange

Good evening. Bill here. Amy's husband. Bill.

Amy isn't feeling well today. Mainly it's 'cause of the broken air conditioning unit. Outside it was 96° today. Inside the thermostat read 97°. Before cooking supper. We got blowing fans. We got a window unit to help supplement the coolth in the kitchen. The whole family's sitting around in what amounts to skivvies. And Amy's eyes are glazed and unfocussed.
So here I am, doing my part to keep the flame of literacy alive. By hijacking her blog.
Enjoy.

Things – and people – are not always what they seem. Or even what they claim to be.

I had a roommate once, in a city far away. We’ll call him "Larry" because "Brad Pitt" was already taken. I had met him once before I moved in. He was looking for someone to help with the rent, and I was trying to get away to a city far away. We were introduced at a science fiction convention, which was the type of crowd I was running with at the time, and made arrangements.

“Larry?” people said. “He’s harmless enough.” So I showed up on New Year’s Day, with my final paycheck from my old job and an Escort full of my belongings. He was glad to see me, and gracious enough, and I settled in.

At some point in the following week I started noticing the peculiarities. The casual pants that were just a tad too short. The stiff curly hair combed straight out to the side like a sheet caught in a gale. The way his eyes got bigger at random moments, as if he had just had a thought that startled him. The way he stared at his hands as if in disbelief. The little secret smile.

Finally, I had to say something. He had been picking at the back of his hand and muttering under his breath. “You OK?” I asked.

He looked up, and I’d swear he was delighted I asked.

“I’ve got psoriasis!”

“Ah!” I said. “I hear that’s painful.”

“No, you don’t understand! It means something’s wrong!”

“They have medications now….”

“But it’s not supposed to happen!” Larry began waving his arms. “Something’s wrong with my shield!”

I struggled with myself. I could just walk away from him. I wanted to walk away. But the question forced its way out. “Shield?”

“The shield that’s supposed to protect me from harm,” he said, and his eyes lit up.

He wasn’t human at all, he explained, but a Star Being from Andromeda. He had been on Earth for twenty thousand years, and this was his first illness.

“I thought you were from Tennessee,” I pointed out.

“Well of course I have to change bodies occasionally. That’s where my last incarnation was. Oak Ridge.”

“Where the nuclear lab is? Do your parents know?”

Over the next few months I learned more about his special powers. His shield was impervious to bullets and knives, although he was worried that they may be failing. He could levitate whenever he wanted; he just saw no real need to right now. And it had been years since he had made himself invisible.

I was constantly astounded. Here I was, sharing an apartment with a Star Being! And to think that he disguised the fact from the world by posing as a shoe salesman at the local mall. I had to break him. Because I couldn’t afford to move out quite yet.

I looked for chinks in his logic. I challenged him to prove his assertions. I talked to friends who had known him for years. “Don’t fight it,” they said. “He’s taken down smarter men than you.”

Thanks, I thought. And I persisted. I just couldn’t help myself.

“So why are you here? On Earth, I mean?”

“We were each assigned a world to monitor. You guys just got lucky and got me.”

“And you report back to Andromeda?”

“That’s a problem,” he said as his face clouded. “I haven’t been able to make contact for years. My powers seem to be fading.”

“Like your shield.”

“Exactly! You do understand!”

One day, about three months into my ordeal, he got a twinkle in his eye and said, “You don’t really think I believe I’m an alien, do you?”

I sat back and stared at him, mildly stunned buy this turn of conversation.

“I don’t know,” I said. “Do you?”

“Of course not! It’s all a game, a big joke.”

The next day I came home to find him standing rigid in the middle of the living room floor, arms out from his sides, eyes rolled back in his head. He didn’t seem to be breathing.

“Yo, Larry,” I said. “What’s up?”

He took a moment to come out of his trance. He looked crestfallen. “Oh, nothing. I was just trying to see if I could levitate again. Sometimes,” he went on with a sigh, “I think I can feel it coming back. I guess I’ll just have to be patient.”

My own patience was nearing the end. I quietly let it be known I was ready to move, and I wasn’t too concerned about having to share an apartment again.

I still haven’t made up my mind about Larry. I figure there are three possibilities.

It may have been an elaborate hoax, a character he played for at least fifteen years, that nobody was able to break, but that nobody else believed. If so, nobody thought it was terribly funny, either.

He may have really believed, which makes him one of the saddest cases of delusion I’ve ever heard of.

Or, perhaps, he really was a twenty-thousand-year-old Star Being from Andromeda. It is a possibility. Given a big enough universe, anything could have happened. In fact, stranger things have happened.

But not around here.

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Copyright © 2008 by Bill Mullis. Used by permission