Tongue-In-Cheek … Foot-In-Mouth

I don’t know what it is about the power of boobs, but a good sturdy pair of breasts can make an otherwise sane man do absolutely anything, even the laundry.  And I am certain that women came up with the idea for BOTH boobs and laundry.  I say this because even as far back as the caveman days, according to cave drawings, respectable, male knuckle-dragging Neanderthals would wear their loincloths until they became more permanently bonded to their bodies than their own skin.

So, then one day the cave ladies, evidently, had reached their limit with the gross guys and they got together and hatched a plan, whereby when a male loincloth got so encased with crap forcing him to have to scrape them off with a brontosaurus bone in order to be able to bend and sit down, a cave woman would subtly flash a breast in the male’s general direction, request that he maybe wash his shorts, and the next thing you knew the entire male population of the tribe would be pushing, shoving, trampling each other underfoot, and beating a path to the lake to scrub their vile shorts against a rock…just because of a boob.  Note: men are boobs.

Anyway, even today, this male crusty clothing custom continues, as made evidenced by the fact that I wore the same pair of Fruit of the Loams during ALL four years of college.   By my Junior year, it was able to answer the phone.  By my Senior year, it had several holes in it ALL large enough for Neptune, or Rosie O’Donnell, to pass through without coming into contact with the sides.  Okay, honestly, Rosie had to suck in her gut a little.

However, I did actually wash them once, which resulted from a particularly prank-full fraternity pledging party, wherein I was made to eat a concoction of ketchup, marshmallows, liver, onion dip, beets, raw oysters, while washing it down with warm stale beer.  I will spare you the details by ONLY telling you that I had an accident while sleeping, and when I awoke with my face firmly stuck to my pillow, my then girlfriend requested that I wash my shorts, by which I mean she flashed one of her breasts in my direction, and suddenly I found myself in the laundry room, violently pistol whipping my underwear during the spin cycle…just because of a boob.  Note: I am a boob.

Women are also very fussy about when you are supposed to wash clothes.  They think you are supposed to wash clothes after you have worn a piece of clothing (get this, ready, brace yourselves) ONCE!  Oh, too funny.  The term “once” includes if they ONLY tried on a piece of clothing for like two seconds.  I am not making this up.  I have been standing directly across from my daughter, Sara, who, in front of my very own eyes, put on a pair of her clean, straight-out-of-her dresser socks, stood in front of the mirror, spun around, spun back, stood up on her tippy toes, made a frowny face, removed the socks, and tossed them into the (OMG!) hamper.  And my wife, her mentor, is worse.  She once washed a shirt after ONLY looking at it.  I kid you not.  What is wrong with these people?

Women are also big on sorting laundry.  And when a girl does the laundry she neatly categorizes clothing into piles which will ALL be washed as individual loads.  Mounds are separated by the following clothing criteria: color, type of material, pattern, size, shape, weight, the place they are worn on the body, where they were purchased, the amount they cost, the date, time, and geographical location they were last used, and of course the number of fibers per square inch.

Men don’t employ the separation pile theory.  Nope, men, during halftime, will violently scurry throughout the house grabbing whatever he can get his hands on, to include assorted pieces of furniture, the Labrador retriever, Max, and his wife’s MOST favorite bra, and heave everything into the washing machine at the same time.  This causes the washing machine to begin acting a little funny, by which I mean it starts vibrating, rattling, shaking, walking across the basement foundation, moaning and groaning as if it were about to give birth to another household appliance, say a refrigerator, which was slightly larger and heavier that it was.

And Women, who own boobs and subsequently own bras—okay, some men own boobs and NEED to invest in some brawny bras, but we’ll leave that for another column—tend to frown on their bras smelling like a wet dog, and therefore are not quick to tolerate this type of male barbaric bra behavior.  And this is mainly why manufacturers of sensitive feminine garments, companies which are generally owned and operated by feminine females, or feminine men owning fancy French names, which are arguably one in the same, have affixed LARGE warning labels to their delicate silky unmentionables containing detailed washing-related instructions intended for the miniature immature minds of men who DO NOT own fancy French names.

EXAMPLE

Do Not Machine Wash.  Do Not Wash By Hand.  Do Not Wash With Any Animal Owning Fur.  Do Not Wash My New Fishnet Silk Stockings With Your Hockey Skates.  Do Not Add Bleach.  Do Not Add Fabric Softener.  Do Not Add Fabric Hardener.  Do Not Add Anything At All, Only Water, But Do Not Use Water Which Is Too Hot.  Do Not Use Water Which Is Too Cold.  Check With The Three Bears And Then ONLY Use Water Which is EXACTLY Right, That Is, .00987 Degrees Celsius Or Fahrenheit I Forget.  Maybe It Was Kelvin?  Whatever.  Anyway, AND Don’t You Dare Attempt To Fling My Favorite Thong Into That Washing Machine By Grabbing It With Your Dirty Disgusting Fungus-Filled Toes, You Insensitive (Nasty Word) Clod!

Additionally, folding clothes is another faux pas for fellas.  I’m not sticking up for guys here. I’m just saying that men physically cannot fold clothes.  It has something to do with the not being able to match up the corners.  Same thing goes for making a bed.  Never, not once in the recorded history of the life of any man have we EVER been able to get the bed sheet to be of equal length on BOTH sides of the mattress.  It’s too much pressure, especially first thing in the morning.

Sure, women can make a bed.  They can also wrap presents.  They can also give birth.  Big deal.  But men don’t wrap presents.  At best, we men put the present in a paper bag and hand it over to the present receiver, but no wrapping, because for one thing we men always cut the wrapping paper too short, which means the wrapping paper only goes 10% around the present, whereby leaving a slightly noticeable gap visible from the moon.  And then we twist and turn and reposition the package hoping that maybe we can make the square package, something EQUAL on all sides, d’uh, fit within the confines of the wrapping paper.  For some reason this never works, even after several cases of beer and lots of whacking at the package with a hammer.  Okay, yes, admittedly, we’ve attempted to wrap presents and filled in the gap by using a magic marker and then placed the package with the GIANT Grand Canyon gaping seem facing downwards.  But when the recipient of the present picks up the present, our wives will see the gargantuan gap, and well, it’s a whole thing for yet another column.  Hey, job security.

So anyway, listen, what if we men are presented with a serious situation?  What if the present is an odd shaped, then what, huh?  You didn’t think of that one did you, ladies?  I did, because I have GIANT brain—me and Jethro.  And if a man cannot wrap something in the shape of a square, how on earth do you think we’d be able to wrap something containing an appendage?  Hello?  I wrapped a frying pan once.  It had a handle.  Frying pans are known for having handles.  When I was done it could have been hung in the Guggenheim museum as a new form of modern art, located right next to a fascinating prehistoric exhibit of cavewomen exposing their breasts to cavemen who were on their hands and knees busily scrubbing their loincloths.

Copyright © 2009 Bill Drury.  All Rights Reserved.