Cooties

When I used to babysit for the grandkids, I tried to keep a handle on the household chores. I would throw a load of clothes in the washer, make up beds, whatever was needed. The kids would help with some things, but that usually wound up being more trouble than it was worth, so I’d just do it myself. It was the same way when my kids were little. Take doing laundry, for example. I have 4 sons, & when it came time to fold the laundry, it was a riot! Not in a funny way, I mean they would go to any lengths to avoid it. I really couldn’t blame them – with 8 in the household, we didn’t have a ‘dirty clothes pile’, we had a dirty clothes mountain range! (You could seriously see the snow line, it was that high!) We would take the snow shovel & at least keep a path cleared, but occasionally we would have to detonate explosives at the top of the slopes in order to reduce the avalanche threat. Every so often I would take an entire day & just do load after load of laundry, and after each load was dried, I would place the warm, clean clothes on my bed. Then, when the kids arrived home after school, I would march them into the bedroom and tell them to start folding. They would get their own clothes and put them away, and then start on towel, socks, etc. But there was one unwritten rule – no one would touch Mom’s unmentionables!
Now, you have to have the mental image – mounds and mounds of clean clothes, being churned over and over by 8 little hands, high on my 4 poster bed. Usually big brother Andrew would be trying to pull a pair of Dad’s boxers over the younger ones’ heads, or they’d be balling up socks to use in a pretend snow ball fight. Then, suddenly, one of they would pull something out of the pile that was silky and lacy – Mom’s undies!! Aaaugggghh!!
They had a very strict protocol for this situation, which was broken down into 3 parts:
1. The kids who had not touched the garment immediately began to yell and point at the one who did.
2. The one who had contact with it would immediately try to stop the cooties from spreading by pouring Clorox, hot coffee, battery acid, etc on the infected site.
3. Basically all the boys would flee, screaming bloody murder, trailing clean clothes all over the house, out in the yard and down the block.
I tried to explain to them that they could not be harmed by touching my underwear, but it was to no avail. They were convinced that they would be emotionally scarred, veritable social outcasts if I forced them into close proximity with lacy, girly things. (At least they felt that way for a few more years …) I would not relent, however, and a compromise had to be reached. One suggestion was to try & procure one of the Haz-Mat suits from Hanford, but that didn’t pan out. I suggested those thick rubber gloves that go up to the elbow, but they said it was not enough protection. Then one day they discovered the cure: one of the boys brought in a pool cue! Why hadn’t we thought of that before!
From then on, laundry was a snap! When a lacy, frilly under garment churned to the surface, all activity would stop while someone grabbed the pool stick. Then, with precision that you would normally see in scientists removing radioactive rods from a reactor, my unmentionables would be carefully lifted and gently deposited on my dresser. It was a win/win situation: I didn’t have to flog the boys for refusing to help with chores, and they didn’t need counseling from touching Mom’s underwear. As time went on, they boys grew older & got jobs, so they began to purchase their own clothing, and so wanted to do their own laundry. Eventually our massive laundry day blitz became a thing of the past, as so did the trauma of touching silky things. I would like to say that all of my sons grew up to be healthy, productive members of society …. I would like to say that, but too many people here know my family personally. So I’ll just say that they have all lived to reach adulthood, and most of them kept their real names.