Laundry In De Nile

Does this sound familiar? You make excuses not to do a thing you ought to do, the obligation/onus/problem festers and grows, and then you want to do it even less.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m a huge fan of denial. It’s amazing how much stuff you can ignore until it goes away or doesn’t matter anymore. So there are a few pairs of dirty socks tossed in the corner. Big deal. That’s what flip flops are for.

Denial, to put it in what I’ve been told is a passé idiom, rocks.

I’ve always called this kind of thing my “Laundry Theory of Life” – but that doesn’t mean what it used to mean when I made it up.

Once upon a time, back when I only thought I was cynical, I referred to some problems as being like laundry in that you could kick laundry away and ignore it. (This was even before the joke about denial being a river in Egypt. That’s how long ago it was.)

None of this is Bukowski-level social commentary. Moreover, in the long run it’s not even true. When you’re out of clean shirts and you have a big date or interview coming up, then what?

Like with most of our real problems, we may think we can avoid laundry, but one way or the other, ultimately we have to deal with it.

Self-delusion may be traditional simile-fodder, but I want more than that. Besides, those wet towels are getting kind of funky.

Thus, for a while, “laundry theory” applied to stuff you think you can ignore but you really can’t, because you’re going to have a sudden urgent need for whatever is wadded up and buried at the very bottom of the heap.

This didn’t last either.

Now “laundry theory” is back to meaning something you can ignore, because if you wait long enough, that stinky fabric compost pile might evolve into a creature that can walk or ooze itself into the shower.

Now, that’s cynicism, folks.

Sigh. Time to go check the dryer.