THE TROUBLE WITH TISSUES

Facial tissues are the bane of my existence these days. My husband is snotty! Not a snot, just snotty. It’s a long story – over forty years long.

For years, my husband carried a pocket bandana – not a handkerchief, no, he needed a big boy for his big blows. As I wrote in The Sneeze, he makes a great noise when he sneezes – same thing when he blows his nose. He had, still has, quite a collection of bandanas, but he no longer likes having a – how shall I put this delicately – a “wet” handkerchief in his pocket. In a way, I welcomed this change. You have never lived until you’ve hand-washed snotty bandanas while you’re traveling away from home. I did that for the first for the first few trips and then I rebelled. Perhaps that was the germ of the idea for him to use tissues.

Now he prefers to use Kleenex. Not just any facial tissue, the others are, too him, too scratchy, too thin, and prone to blow-through. He likes tissues: one blow and he can throw it away. I rarely encounter a snotty tissue these days, but with great regularity I get a laundry-full of Kleenex remnants. Why? Because he leaves the clean tissues in his pockets. He stocks up every morning. It’s a loud “aaarrrg!” when I open up the washer and see tissue bits all over everything. I try to get as much of it off as I can, but a lot winds up in the dryer and on the dryer filter – and all over the floor. It’s one of my earthly trials.

So, who’s the dummy here, him or me?  Me, of course, because only in recent months have I thought to go through his pockets before I throw the shirts or jeans into the washer. Live and learn – but why did it take me so long?

I do realize that I am not the only one with this problem - this laundress thought to take a picture of the mess.
It's such fun picking all the schnibs off of everything - not!