When I first moved to Montreal as a young adult, I had little or no knowledge how to wash and iron clothes. My mother was old-fashioned in the sense that she did all of this work around the house. She was a stay-at-home mother all her married life. That said, I should have have taken the initiative to get her to teach me the right amount of detergent to use, how not to mix colors with whites–especially ones that could run– when to use bleach and how to iron clothes. My first experience with ironing clothes was a nightmare. The iron was too hot and I scorched an expensive dress shirt. We have to learn by experience. My wife and I have spent time teaching our children how to wash and dry their own laundry. They will never know the difficulties I faced when they finally move out on their own. We hope that when they finally go to university, they won’t return home on holidays with bags of laundry…
I wished I had also taken the initiative to ask my mother why perfectly good pairs of socks disappear sometime between putting them into the wash and taking them out of the dryer. It’s one mystery I deal with in tonight’s radio program. Unfortunately, I have no answers to pass along as to where they go. Sometimes you’ll find them tucked into a shirt sleeve, or inside a pair of jeans. Other times they simply vanish. Eventually they turn up, but where they go in the meantime is anybody’s guess. I sometimes find them in other loads of laundry that I’m removing from the dryer, when I’m folding clothes or when I’m putting fresh sheets on the beds.
We’ve dealt with chaos over a few programs to begin the week. Tonight, entropy, as explained by a very wise author. I hope you will tune in, because he claims entropy has a lot to do with missing socks.
…And don’t get me started on my lack of knowledge about darning socks. Whether a single sock shows up on its own, or I get holes in my socks, I still revert to my bachelor days, and just go out and buy a new pair.
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Don Jackson
