No doubt, there are terrible, selfish, horrible people in this world. Some of them are lazy. Some are manipulative. Some are shrill, nagging harpies.But when it comes to my husband, he is not unkind, neglectful, sloppy, or presumptuous when he does things like leave an empty toilet paper role or fail to tell me the Dixie cup dispenser in the bathroom is empty.
I think he is terrified of the linen closet.
The linen closet is a mysterious, magical region to him. It's contantly changing, items are seldom arranged in an easily discernible manner, and oddities not normally found in a linen closet can be found in there. Sometimes. Or sometimes not.
Other places my husband would rather not venture into: the pantry; the refrigerator in the garage; the back of the refrigerator or freezer in the kitchen; the pantry; anywhere dealing with holidays and celebrations, like the sideboard or the tubs of decorations in the garage; under-sink storage.
But worst of all, the most frightening, unnatural and disorienting of all... my purse.
Why are women able to find the blender that hasn't been used in three years that we received as a wedding present last millenium, but men have trouble finding their hats that are on the very same coatrack on which they put it that morning, but someone spun the coatrack around so that the hat is now hanging on the opposite side, thus confusing them utterly? I have a theory.
Childhood games. Boys tend to play games with rules, where girls tend to just make shit up. Thus, men have an expectation that things will run the way they "should" and that things will be where they "should" be, whereas women will wing it and check a dozen or more places it "could" be if they don't find it on their first attempt.
I guess the short version of this story is: I need to clean out my linen closet so my husband can find things and then I won't need to replace everything that becomes empty.
