TheBanyanTree: Magic Formula DryUp

[Pam James]

THAT was entertaining!!  thank you!!

On Mon, Feb 15, 2021 at 1:03 AM <tobie at shpilchas.net> wrote:

> It’s Sunday and I heard that it’s Valentine’s Day, 14th February, 2021
>
>
> Hello all you masked heroes,
>
>         About Valentine’s Day:  All I can say is, "Well wooo hooo".  Never
> been a fan. I do not hate love, nor lovers, nor sentiment, nor even maudlin
> sentimentality when it’s called for (it sneaks up on you, doesn’t it!).
> But designating one day a year to go all soft on the knee about getting
> your sweetheart flowers and candy, and one day a year going all misled in
> the head about expecting your sweetheart to give you flowers and candy
> (okay preferably chocolate, darker the better), doesn’t really say how much
> you love someone or how much someone loves you.
>
>         It’s like the difference between:
>
>         "I love you."
>
>         and
>
> Q:      "Do you love me?"
>
> A:      "Yes."  (?)  (or worse: "I guess so.")
>
>         But this is besides the point.  That was just the overture to what
> I really came here to tell you.  And what I wanted to tell you was about
> how Meyshe and I have designated chores for certain days of the week, so we
> can keep track of how this sameness of time is passing.  We’re trying to
> keep on schedule.  The schedule we designed for ourselves ordered us to
> change Meyshe’s bedsheets.  This hadn’t been done in quite a while. And
> with things like that, the longer you put it off, the more reason there is
> to put it off.  We weren’t looking forward to it. So we skirted it until
> yesterday.  I’d say that’s remarkable for righteous avoidance.  Today I
> look back on our monumental accomplishment. And I am happy to tell you what
> I wrote about the experience. This is straight from the pages of my
> journal, unexpurgated. It’s a sorry thing the way my brain works.  I mean
> when it works. Lissen here:
>
>
>         The unenviable task Meyshe and I undertook yesterday took a bit
> longer than we thought. All we needed to do was make the bed — change his
> sheets. That shouldn’t be so hard, even if the sheets hadn’t been changed
> since …………….. oh dear.  It hadn’t occurred to me until I thought about it,
> then asked myself.  How long has it been since Meyshe’s bedsheets were
> changed? The last time they were changed, Susan must have changed them. And
> that means some time before Governor Newson ordered us all to shelter in
> place.  As I said yesterday, Meyshe doesn’t get into his bed. He sleeps on
> top of the covers, so it couldn’t be that bad. But that was not true. It
> was bad. The sheets were bad. They were worse than bad. They were stiff
> with habit or disuse or rigor mortis or what I feared most:
>         spews of bodily fluids that just leapt ecstatically from their
> source to soak the sheets nearly a year ago. And would that have been a
> reason Meyshe stopped sleeping under the covers? Perhaps his ecstatic
> celebration had not dried yet?
>
>         I recall the awkward wordless negotiations between myself and my
> lovers——who was going to sleep on the wet spot? Well, someone was going to.
> Either that or change the sheets, fetch a towel that will ball up under
> your thigh, cut a hole in the sheets, move to another city, purchase a set
> of those self drying fitted sheets. But there are problems with those
> sheets as we all know.  Yes, they successfully and efficiently dry the wet
> spot, wick it away into a second layer of the sheet that quickly
> biodegrades leaving no trace. Clever, patented formula that is also used in
> diapers, sports wear, table cloths — many uses. But the problem with the
> self drying sheets is not that they are faulty but that they are too
> enthusiastic . The wet spot disappears within seconds, but the material
> also sucks the moisture out of your naked flesh.
>
>         WARNING! DO NOT FALL ASLEEP ON THESE SHEETS!
>
>         The design flaw was discovered when a newlywed couple on their
> honeymoon in a luxurious hotel hide-away in beautiful Hawaii did not check
> out as scheduled. The DO NOT DISTURB (wink wink) sign was still hanging on
> the doorknob so they’d been left alone to swoon and spoon in the June
> lagoon. But when the staff got no answer from repeated vigorous knocking,
> the manager was summoned and when they broke into the room the couple was
> found mummified in the bedsheets.
>
>         What?! A suicide pact? Had they taken their vows and then feasted
> on the dozens of tiny packets of desiccants thrown into pill bottles, bulk
> salt bins, cleaning powders? Autopsies disproved that theory. How had this
> happened? The place swarmed with police, investigators, pathologists, then
> the FBI. The grizzly incident was kept secret. At least they tried, but of
> course the news leaked out. Every news outlet from the National Enquirer to
> Buzz Feed to The New York Times sent reporters. Mostly they were interested
> in the visuals, and exciting the rumor mill. When the biochemists were
> called in and the culprit discovered, the official and very public denials
> were issued.
>
>         Naturally, the families of the happy young couple sued the hotel.
> The hotel sued the manufacturer of Magic Formula DryUp, who sued the
> brilliant inventor who disappeared into his clothes hamper without a
> trace.  Parents who’d prided themselves in having thought they’d potty
> trained their babies at eight months realized how close they’d come to
> tragedy and switched to good old fashioned 100% cotton untreated diapers
> and felt grateful to be knee deep in shit. A famous sports shoe
> manufacturer who had spent millions on a new ad campaign touting their
> shoes that kept the whole Olympic marathon team’s feet so dry after 26
> miles that they guaranteed eliminating that dirty gym sock smell forever,
> had to swallow billions of dollars worth of magic shoes with their "Just
> Don’t Do It" recall campaign.
>
>         And I was going to tell you about how Meyshe and I conquered the
> changing of the bedsheets ordeal. All I have the time and energy for
> tonight is to whet your appetite for the story by telling you that to
> change the sheets on Meyshe’s bed, we had to get to his bed first. To do
> that we had to implement an assault on the overgrowth and undergrowth
> choosing a scorched earth approach. His room put up a valiant struggle, but
> we prevailed.
>
>
>         And that’s what’s going on in our house.   How are you all doing?
>
>
>
> Love,
>
>
> Tobie
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> "Pica: a bad cook’s dream guest" THS, 2021
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> Tobie Helene Shapiro
> tobie at shpilchas.net
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