Sssslide over here, ssssweetheart. I have a ssssecret to tell you.
Ooh! I love secrets! What is it, Mister Snake?
Ssssseee that tree over there? It has the sssssweetest fruit in the garden. Ssssneak a little taste and you’ll ssseee.
OMGosh! You are totally right! This is the tastiest thing I’ve ever eaten! I wonder why He told me not to eat it? HEY ADAM, GET OVER HERE!!!
Eve, He said not to eat those.
Oh, come ON! That guy over there with the funny tongue said it was okay. Why would he lie to me?
Hmm..you have a point. Okay. Maybe just one.
(a bite later…)
Hehe..ha…
What’s so funny?
Your fun bags are showing!
OMG! Well, they’re not nearly as unsightly as that noodle you’ve got dangling between your legs!
Oh, shit! Quick, Eve! Grab me a fig leaf!
And so it began.
Today, I did eleven loads of laundry.
ELEVEN. And for this, I blame the Snake.
If the snake hadn’t gotten bored and decided to have a little fun at the expense of the new guy, I wouldn’t have to deal with clothes. They say Original Sin is about knowledge. For me, it’s all about laundry.
Laundry has no beginning. It has no end. Laundry is an infinite trickster. It is Satan’s magic show. This is evidenced in a couple of evil ways:
- The Disappearing Act (assisted by socks): Takes place sometime during the wash cycle. When is a trade secret. The Disappearing Act is designed to make us think we’re going crazy. Two matching socks go in, only one comes out. But it’s more insidious than that; one day, you bring home the Costco Sock Superpack; the next thing you know, you’re at work wearing one gray men’s trouser sock and one pink Hello Kitty booty with a big-toe hole. Because that’s the closest you came to finding a match.
- The Reappearing Act (sometimes known simply as the Appearing Act)-Takes place in an empty laundry basket. You have come to the end of your pile of laundry (FINALLY!!!), only to be greeted with a single article of clothing (Note: this is usually also a single sock. Socks are apparently a snake’s instrument of torture. Which is interesting, as snakes have no feet. This may have something to do with the snake’s supposed Original punishment for inciting the Original sin, wherein his feet were either magically removed, or lopped off with a dull hatchet. I’m going with the latter. It pleases me.) Anyway, the Reappearing Act is obviously designed to drive us crazy.
A few years ago, we took the wind out of the Disappearing Act’s sail when we, collectively, stopped giving a shit whether or not our socks matched. Or maybe that was just an Alaskan thing.
So, that’s a start. But I experienced the second act just today when, after completing 11 loads of laundry (I thought that needed repeating), I stopped to mentally fist bump my awesome self, and spotted A SINGLE WHITE SOCK in the laundry basket.
Unwashed.
In the past I would have thrown it away and pretended it didn’t happen, but as laundry is borne of straight, unplugged evil, it seemed that in the past, whenever I threw the cursed item away, something worse invariably happened later. Just sayin’.
So, I threw a little mental tantrum until I remembered the other reason laundry is endless.
It’s generally either unacceptable or inconvenient to do laundry naked. So while you do laundry, you create more laundry.
It is truly a Sisyphean task.
So to the snake, I’d like to say
Nice Job, Asshole
You have somehow managed to out Zeus, Zeus. I mean, he only made one guy spend eternity on a task that never got any lighter. You threw a whole species under the bus.*
I apologize for mixing stories, myths, metaphors, etc. But laundry is just that big. Also, I don’t actually think there was a snake. But he makes a good scapegoat.
Alexainie is 42, a single mother of two and making it work. She’s lived in Alaska for 33 years, where, in a village of 75, she shoveled shit for dogs whose front paws were insured for more than she was worth. She experienced a 7.1 earthquake from the 18th floor, and was held hostage in an outhouse by a brown bear (luckily, she was in just the right place to shit herself). And, she notes: “And although I doubt I’ve gone more than a week without seeing a moose, whether walking down the highway, nibbling on the birch trees in my yard, or blocking my front door, I’ve never been chased by one. My grandma TOTALLY was, though. And the loss of that 8mm cassette is one of the single greatest regrets of my life.”
You can read more Alexainie here:
Dope Sick
Mistakes
Pay No Attention to the Man Behind the Curtain
