Living in a Tight Knit Family

Peter McKay Tue Apr 22, 3:00 AM ET

Creators Syndicate - Around our house, we have a division of labor that's common in most American families. My wife does some things she's better at, like laundry, while I do some things I'm not better at, like fixing faucets and killing bugs.

I don't want to actually do my laundry myself. (To be honest, I don't actually know how to do my own laundry.) And for the most part, I have few complaints. Like most men, I put on clothes, they get dirty, and I throw them down the laundry chute. A few days later, they magically appear in my room, clean and folded.

But, I have a number of things that shouldn't go in the dryer. My dress shirts, for instance, can last forever if they stay out of the dryer. I wear them over and over, until the collar and sleeves get all frayed. (Then, I wear them a little bit more.) But each time they get thrown in the dryer, they shrink just a little bit. I'll know that they've been in there because the neck will start to feel a little tight and the sleeves feel just a tiny bit shorter. I'll be sitting in a business meeting, take a deep breath and suddenly feel like the Hulk, about to split my seams.

Whenever I accuse my wife, she denies she ever puts my shirts in the dryer and points out that if I didn't just sit there on the couch and drink beer, they would still fit. This explains the body of the shirt, but does not account for the slowly shortening sleeves unless, by any chance, Molson contains human growth hormone as an ingredient.

I don't spend a lot of time figuring out what to wear. When I'm not wearing dress shirts at work, I usually just wear sweaters at home. I have a drawer full of sweaters that all look pretty much alike, and the minute I get home from work, I take off my suit and pull one of them out from the drawer. My wife points out I'm just like Mr. Rogers, except that as far as she knows, he liked kids and didn't yell at people for no reason.

A couple weekends ago, I took all my sweaters (which were starting to get a little ripe) and put them in a pile to be washed by hand. I kept out only a gray one I was actually wearing — my favorite sweater. Later that day, I looked for the sweaters, but they were gone.

"You didn't put my sweaters in the wash, did you?" I asked. My wife rolled her eyes at me and shook her head.

"No!" she said, in a tone that was adamant and offended, but suspiciously (and conveniently) evasive. I looked around for my sweaters for a few minutes, but then forgot about the whole thing. For the next week or so, I just stuck with my gray sweater.

The next weekend, though, when I got my pile of magically clean, folded laundry on the dresser, I found my sweaters. I held one up and my jaw dropped.

Last time I saw this sweater, it was exactly my size. Now, however, it would be snug on Mini-Me. One by one, I went through the others. They were all the same, so tiny that it looked like I'd been shopping at Baby Gap.

I yelled for my wife using language that Mr. Rogers never, ever would use, even if he hit his thumb with a hammer.

"These sweaters," I said, "went through the dryer, didn't they!"

My wife started to roll her eyes, but then when she saw my teeny tiny little sweater, she stopped in mid-denial. I grabbed the other sweaters to show her what she'd done, but by the time I'd turned around, she was long gone.

For the past few weeks, I've worn the gray sweater almost every day. Then, this past weekend, my 12-year-old daughters were helping my wife fold laundry in the living room. One of the girls looked puzzled for a minute, and then held up an item of clothing.

"Whom does this belong to?" she asked.

I stared for a moment, and then sighed. My favorite gray sweater was so small I could barely recognize it.

"You can have it, honey," I said to my daughter. "If it doesn't fit you, maybe you could put it on one of your stuffed animals."

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