"A Clothes Call"

By Jerry Zezima

Ever since my wife, Sue, has been out of commission with an injured hand, which required surgery and has prevented her from performing important tasks like keeping me alive, I have had a whole laundry list of things to do.

At the top is — how did you ever guess? — laundry.

For the past 46 years, I have been a basket case when it comes to dirty clothes. But you know the old saying: Everything comes out in the wash.

That’s why I have been washing, drying and folding shirts, pants, shorts, socks, towels, washcloths, bedsheets, pillowcases and, of course, underwear, which is the very foundation of laundry.

“Do you know how to turn on the dryer?” Sue asked.

“Sure,” I answered. “Whisper sweet nothings into the lint screen. That’ll turn it on.”

Actually, it’s not difficult. All I have to do is press “power,” followed by “start.” Since the setting is already on “normal” (which doesn’t apply to me), I don’t have to do anything else.

But I do have to remember to run the washing machine first, otherwise there wouldn’t be anything to dry.

“I’m catching on,” I told Sue, who showed me how to load the washer.

“You don’t want it to become unbalanced,” she said.

“Like me?” I asked.

Sue nodded and told me how much detergent to use so suds wouldn’t come streaming out and engulf the house like a soapy version of “The Blob.”

Once the clothes and other washables are done, they must be folded. This isn’t too complicated until you realize that if you don’t do it right, the shirts and shorts will become hopelessly wrinkled, especially if they are jammed into a dresser drawer.

The other day I put on a T-shirt that made me look like a rotten prune. Then again, it could have been me. I’m old.

The most difficult items are bedsheets. That’s because they are approximately the size of a parachute and can’t be folded neatly. You have to hold one end in each hand, stretch out your arms and, using your fumbling fingers, put the corners together once, twice, three times without dropping it on the floor.

Or you can simply start by spreading it out on the floor and trying to fold it that way.

And this is just for standard bedsheets. The really maddening ones are fitted sheets, whose corners have short elastic strips that go around the corners of the mattress.

“Are they called fitted sheets because you have a fit when you try to fold them?” I asked Sue.

“You just don’t know how to do it,” she replied.

She was right, so I rolled one of the stupid things in a ball and stuffed it into the linen closet.

The next day, I took it out, along with a regular sheet and four pillowcases, so I could change the bed, a challenging chore I had never done before.

I stripped the bed of the dirty sheets and pillowcases, along with the blanket and bedspread, and tried to fit the fitted sheet snugly over the corners of the mattress. When I realized I had turned the sheet the wrong way, I uttered a word that sounded like sheet.

Sue heard me.

“Having trouble?” she inquired.

“I’ll get this right if it’s the last thing I do,” I replied, envisioning myself becoming enmeshed in a swirl of sheets, with a pillowcase over my head for good measure, and meeting my demise by suffocation, although at least I would die in bed.

I finally got the fitted sheet fitted. I also got the regular sheet, which had a flowered pattern, over the mattress with the pale side up so when I folded the top part over the blanket, which I had to put on next, the “nice side” would show.

“Just in case we’re visited by Good Housekeeping,” I told Sue, who was impressed when she saw that the bed looked neat and crisp.

“Before I do the next load of laundry,” I said with a yawn, “I think I’ll take a nap.”

Copyright 2024 by Jerry Zezima