'Closet Crisis"

Have you ever had your clothes mad at you because you took other clothes on your vacation and left them languishing in the drawer at home?

If you cannot conceive of such a happenstance, the following anecdote may not be for you.  If this phenomenon, however, resonates with personal experience, you may have no need to hear about it again.

Finally. 

I am writing for nobody.

(It is possible that I have been doing this all along and I just didn’t know about it.  But I’d prefer to believe that I haven’t because… Geez!  And also because I want today to be special.)

It is now almost a month since our trip to New York and Toronto.  And yet, I walk into our clothes closet and my reception in there remains demonstrably hostile. 

Who knew haberdashery could harbor a grievance?  As the late, great Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia famously said, after putting the wrong guy in the White House,

“Get over it.”

I tell you, it is not easy to go in there.  Who wants to get booed in their own clothes closet?

And it is not just the t-shirts.  My sports socks are mad at me as well.  My shirts and slacks, on the other hand, appear blithely oblivious.  Maybe that’s because they’re suspended freely on hangers, rather than cooped up in dark and stuffy dresser drawers.  If I can read clothes – and I apparently can – they seem relieved to have missed the trip East.

LONG-SLEEVED SPORTS SHIRT:  “Five-and-a-half hours in a suitcase?  No thank you.”

Let’s get real here.  (Or as real as you can get when you are talking about wardrobe with feelings.)  You can’t pack everything.  A nine-day excursion requires nine t-shirts and nine pairs of socks.  You simply have to make a choice as to which ones.

That’s a reasonable argument, isn’t it?  So why are they buying it?

A REJECTED T-SHIRT:  “We understand the “nine-and-nine” situation.  The question is, the selection process.  Who made the cut, and why I was left behind?  Was it because I’m an ‘El Salvador’ t-shirt?”

I took a “Habana” t-shirt.

“We are not all the same!”

I could say I picked the first nine t-shirts in the drawer.  But I would be lying.  There was a selection process.  But it was an unconscious one.  (Therefore, I am entirely not to blame.) 

I pick up an armload of t-shirts, I arrange them carefully in my suitcase, I return to the closet for more t-shirts, suddenly I spot a “superior” candidate,  and I exchange it for a t-shirt that was already packed – a t-shirt I was sure I heard singing “Start spreadin’ the news…”

What exactly goes into these decisions?  Why did I choose my “Arizona Spring Training” t-shirt over my “Café Gulistan” Kurdish cuisine t-shirt.  Why did I pack my “Willie Nelson” t-shirt, leaving my “Oink’s Ice Cream and Yogurt” t-shirt behind – with all the other unselected t-shirts – while I was gone?

I swear to you.  I have no idea.

It is even harder to explain to the sports socks.

There I am, poring over a dozen-and-a half-pairs of sports socks, assiduously picking nine balled-up pairs of sports socks instead of nine other ball-up pairs of sports socks…

… that are exactly the same!

I have to be honest here. 

Those sports socks have a legitimate complaint. 

It’s true, I could not – I had no need to – pack them all.  But when they are indistinguishable pairs of sports socks, what exactly is going on?

Whatever the process, I am now persona non grata in my own clothes closet. 

Hopefully, time will eventually alleviate these ruffled feathers.  There will be other trips.  In August when we visit our log cabin in Indiana, I can compensatorily “balance the books”.

I don’t know about the sports socks; it’s not like they have distinguishing numbers on them; I may end up taking the same pairs.  But the t–shirts have logos on them.  I can easily make amends.  Although I can already hear the griping.

“Michigan City is hardly ‘The Big Apple.’  It’s not even Toront…”

Hey, I am trying, okay?  Remember, there is always the “Giveaway Pile.” And if they are wearing my castoffs, those guys are not goin’ anywhere!

(A SELF-REALIZATORY SIGH)

It has come to this.

I am threatening clothing.

Well, what can I tell you?

They started it.