My Big Hairy First World Problem

The vanity top in our new bathroom has a marble design in black, brown, and beige. When I gave my sister the tour, I mentioned that I thought black towels and shower curtain might look sharp, but I wouldn’t be buying them any time soon. All the hidden costs of moving will nickel and dime you to death. Nowadays, I suppose it’s more accurate to say “loonie and toonie” you to death.

One afternoon a few days later, Sis and Mom showed up with a housewarming gift—black towels and shower curtain! I was delighted.

Naturally, I hung them immediately and they did indeed look chic. We would have the trendiest bathroom on the block, not that I’ve seen any of the other bathrooms on the block. Hubby was the first to use the new towels the next morning. By the time I saw him, I hardly recognized him.

“What’s with the gorilla suit?” I asked.

“It’s those new towels,” he said. “They’re leaving black fluff everywhere.” 

Shoot, I thought. I should have washed them first. After running them through the laundry, I filled the back of our half-ton with black lint from the dryer, hauled it to the landfill site, and hung the towels back up.

This time, the entire bathroom wore a layer of black fluff. When I swept it up, it barked at me and ran out the front door and down the street where I think I saw it lift a leg on a fire hydrant, although I may have made that part up.

“I want my old towels back,” Hubby said. “I don’t care what colour they are.”

Some people have no appreciation for décor.

I ran them through the wash again.

“You can use ‘em, but I ain’t usin’ ‘em,” he said.

“Fine,” I said. “I ain’t scared.”

So I did. Black fluff everywhere. I went to work naked that day and no one noticed.  

I went online and discovered black towel fluff is a common dilemma. Entire websites devote themselves to black towel fluff. You can even join a black towel fluff support group, although I didn’t think I was ready for that.

One person suggested embracing the fluff and listed a host of crafts one could create. Another suggested line-drying followed by a good shake outdoors. I repeated this process four times and the towels still gave off lint. I began to experience nightmares about hideous black-fluff monsters coming to life in the sewers of Portage la Prairie, holding black-fluff monster weddings and producing enough black-fluff baby monsters to take over the entire city. The loss of sleep started clouding my judgement, as became evident the next day when a woman with fluffy black hair visited City Hall. I lunged across the counter to choke her and co-workers had to pull me off until I simmered down.

My mom and sister encouraged me to take the towels back to the store, along with the shower curtain that worked fine but no longer matched. “What have you got to lose?” they said. “Maybe they’ll give you store credit.”

So I did. And the store did. I picked out some green towels, washed and hung them. Much better. Hubby says they also give off too much lint, but he is wrong. Black fluff still blurs his vision. He thinks I’m in denial. With martyr-like resignation, he uses the green towels anyway. The man is a saint.

I’ve since concluded it’s not so much the colour as the type of towel. Others told me their horror stories of red fluff, navy fluff, orange fluff, yellow fluff—and the carnage that occurs when they are laundered together. It’s bedlam, I tell you.

Why must life be so darn hard?

The new green towels will work just fine with the shower curtain we already had and the window curtain I whipped up.