April 12, 2018 by Amy
Rotation
It’s pretty common knowledge that you’re supposed to rotate the tires on your car. Some drivers are more vigilant about doing it, but by and large, people know that it should be done. It’s good automotive maintenance.
Years ago an enterprising shoe salesman told my husband that if he bought two pairs of dress shoes and rotated them, the shoes would last far longer than if he bought one pair, wore them ‘til they wore out, then bought another pair. M will forevermore buy his dress shoes two pairs at a time. I have no idea if this logic is sound, but it sounds reasonable and his dress shoes do seem to last for a long time between resoles.
A hundred years ago, when we bought our couches, I insisted they have cushions we could flip and rotate. We had cats, and since cats make vomiting their life’s work, I knew eventually the Scotchgard would succumb. And I knew we’d keep these couches for a hundred years.
Needless to say, we like to rotate things at our house. Some of us like to rotate things more than others.
The madness started years ago. M asked, “Hey, could you rotate my t-shirts when you put my clothes away? You know, put the freshly washed ones in the back or on the bottom, and bring the other ones up front?” He started to explain further and then he realized that the look I was giving him meant if he kept talking he’d find those t-shirts in a place where it’d be uncomfortable to rotate them out again.
I understand why he wants his t-shirts rotated, given that he owns approximately 5,736 t-shirts because he’s never thrown any away. One of his favorites is a dingy white number with the barest trace of a basketball on the front, charmingly decorated with a growing and random assortment of holes. I once tried to purge his collection and he clutched this particular treasure to his chest.
“You can’t throw this out!”
Why not?
“Because it’s from when we won the state basketball championship senior year!”
I didn’t know you played basketball in high school.
“I didn’t. But we won the state championship!”
The shirt stayed, and he sensibly came to the conclusion that since I was sorting, washing, drying, folding and putting away all his laundry*, it might be best to rotate his own shirts if that’s what he wanted. (FYI, he’s never rotated his shirts.)
A few months ago he organized his sock drawer. After I did laundry that week, he paused at the drawer, clutching a handful of socks. “Wait. When you put away my clean socks, do you put them on the right or the left side?” Right, I told him. He scowled. “I’ve been taking them out the right side. Can you put them in on the left from now on?” Again, it took him less than 1.25 seconds and not a word from me to realize he should not ever make extra (read: ridiculous) requests of the laundress. Because the laundress, once infuriated, has the power to make all the clothes disappear. Since he’s afraid of the washer and dryer (“There are so many buttons!”), this is a powerful threat. He put his hands up, backed away and said, “Never mind. I’ll change. I’ll change. I’ll take my socks out the left side.” Smart man.
But that’s not enough, boys and girls. No, rotationapalooza doesn’t stop in the bedroom. He insists we rotate the dishes in the kitchen. This started fairly recently, that I know of. He could have been rotating them all through our marriage and kept it from me like a dark, trashy secret. Now I’m fully aware of his need to rotate the dishes, placing the plates and bowls right out of the dishwasher at the bottom of the stack on the shelf. Why does he insist we do this? “So they wear evenly.”
People, we have Corelle dishware. That shit is indestructible. Nuclear holocaust and what’s left? Cockroaches, Twinkies, and Corelle. There is no way in our measly lives we will ever wear out the Corelle. Zoe’s great-grandchildren will be wondering how they came to inherit plates that are decades old and look brand new. But there he is, several times a week, carefully sliding one stack of plates under another stack of plates, one stack of bowls under another stack of bowls. I love the man for emptying the dishwasher, so I humor him when he’s around.
When he’s gone, though, all hell breaks loose. The system breaks down. There is anarchy in the kitchen. Sometimes, just to mess with him when he’s traveling for work, I’ll call him up in China or India while I’m unloading the dishwasher. We chat for a minute and I let him hear the clink of plates and glasses while I work. Then, when he asks what I’m doing, I sing, “I’m not rotating the diiiiiishes! I’m sticking the clean ones right on tooooooop!” I can hear him grimace over the phone. He is powerless to stop my maniacal dish-sorting antics from thousands of miles away.
I always carefully place his socks back in on the agreed-upon right side, though, no matter where he is. After all, a successful marriage is built on compromise.
*Editor’s Note: Don’t get all bent and turn it into a sexist thing that I do the laundry. I like doing laundry. It gives me a nice sense of accomplishment with very little emotional investment. When we split the chores, he took lawn care, plumbing, killing bugs, and digging holes in the yard for dead pets, so I figure I came out ahead.
Leave a Reply