Why white towels are a bad idea
Mrs. Kennedy writes Fussy. And to her, “writing well is the best revenge.”
White towels are a bad idea if you live with a four-year-old boy. Or a forty-five year old man, or yourself, who inhabits a body that houses a soul that never learned to bleach anything without burning a hole right through it.
We recently moved into a condo that gave my son and us, his parents, our own separate bedrooms for the first time in our family life. Decorating decisions were made and at least one of them spawned from the demon seed of Mickey Mouse. Mickey Mouse! Disney Colors is a line of interior paint I found at Home Depot on one of fifteen or so disorienting trips to the big boxes to agonize over carpet samples and bathroom fixtures. I was drawn, zombie-like, to the colorful rack of paint chips near the cash register, their unearthly colors a strangely compelling antidote to hours of contemplating the mind-numbing nuances of beige and chrome. I quickly collected a fat handful of sample cards and stuffed them into my bag, wondering who was going to have more fun playing with them, me or my son.
He couldn’t have cared less about them. So, free of the random opinions of a meddling preschooler I was able to construct a simple plan to paint all four walls of his new room different colors. The furniture would be white, the carpet would be a beige and highly stain-able Berber, and everything else would be a toxic explosion of cuddliness, one wall Oh Bother Blue, one Friendly Frog green, one Sleeping Beauty Pink, one Forest Sunset orange, and the ceiling would be Main Street Lights yellow. At this point my son chimed in and said he wanted one wall to be gray. GRAY. This is why you don’t ask four-year-olds to be design consultants, they’re far too postmodern. Thinking fast, I said, “Uh, I’ll buy you a gray rug.”
The colors ended up looking so good that the painting contractor brought his own kids over to see it, and they just stood there with tears running down their faces, wondering why their own father hated them so much that he’d never done anything like that for them. No, well, they weren’t really crying. But they did pronounce it the coolest room they’d ever seen.
From there I was going to go off on some fascist campaign and buy my son white sheets. And white toys and white clothes! Instead, a victim of bargain shopping, I picked up some bright pink, green, blue, and orange Tommy Hilfiger sheets and pillowcases on sale at Ross, and channeled my Pottery Barn-induced need for just a little more white into the one room in a house white doesn’t belong: the bathroom. I stuffed all our old, dark, rotten, shredded towels into the rag bag and bought a tower of fluffy, fluffy white bath towels, hand towels, and washcloths.
Oh, the naiveté.
Remember that scene in Pulp Fiction where Samuel L. Jackson and that Scientologist are washing their hands in the bathroom, and when it comes time to dry them Samuel L. wipes his hands neatly and replaces the hand towel on the bar, but the Scientologist (really, I’ve blocked out his name, what is it again? Tony something?) wipes off his hands and leaves big, fat, disgusting streaks of blood everywhere? That’s what my son does. Rinse, rinse, rinse, pat, pat, pat, run away! I’ve thought about showing him that scene in the movie, just to scare him into doing it right. Because what’s childhood without fear? No, I’m kidding, but he does like Uma Thurman. Because we let him watch Kill Bill. Kidding! No, really, we did, a little bit, and he’s getting really good at swinging around that old samurai sword my dad picked up in WWII.
So, the lesson I learned is that where children are concerned, we surround them with color for a reason: it hides the dirt. The end.
August 15th, 2005 at 10:19 am
I loved this article/entry, and think the idea of painting a child’s room a bunch of different colors is a great one. I hadn’t really thought ahead to the bathroom towel problem, though. And I’d forgotten that back in the day soap wasn’t as big a concern as emerging from the bathroom with those slightly damp hands that would indicate I had washed them — it was so much about the show than the actual cleaning. Thanks for writing this and once again managing to do so with wit and humor.
August 15th, 2005 at 12:36 pm
Awesome!
August 15th, 2005 at 1:13 pm
What’s a “towel”?
August 15th, 2005 at 1:54 pm
It’s like a “diaper” except larger and less absorbent.
Hope that helps!
August 15th, 2005 at 4:39 pm
Your big words confuse me.
August 15th, 2005 at 5:47 pm
Color and Prints. Prints hide the essence of boy real well.
August 16th, 2005 at 5:43 am
So wait. When I have kids, I have to surrender my white-sheets-and-towels fixation? DANG, I’d just gotten to the point where I never had to match anything, ever!!
August 16th, 2005 at 7:17 am
Our daughter’s room was painted in a similar fashion. Green, yellow, periwinkle and teal for the walls and salmon for the ceiling. The kids loved it. The grown-ups said it looked like TCBY, and a burrtio place. It was that way for 5 years. When we put the house on the market, the very first thing the realtor said was “Paint that room white.”
We use brown towels. In a way it’s gross because you never know what is hiding there. With 4 kids the possibilities are endless.
Why is this typing so small? Am I that old?