Under the Wire

Sue stood silently by as I paced back and forth in front of our jointly shared clothes closet. I may have never written a sentence as full of exaggerations as the one you have just finished reading. Such a simple, innocent sounding statement, you might say. Nothing could be further from the truth.

If any of you male readers share a closet with a member of the opposite gender, two glaring inaccuracies are already obvious. Number one, there is no such thing as a “jointly shared” clothes closet between a man and a woman. Jointly shared implies equality for both sharing parties. Has there ever been a single recorded instance where a man had equal space in a closet with his wife? No way, José. The ratio of his to hers probably never exceeds five to one. Fallacy number two is that I would be able to pace up and down past my allotted section of the hanger filled storage area. In fact, if I were to take one full step in either direction, there would be none of my clothes in front of me. In order for my section to be two or more paces long (about six feet), our total closet would have to double for a full sized bowling alley.

Don’t get me wrong. I‘m not deprived of clothing. I have all the shirts, about 15 I estimate, and jeans (six) I could ever need. Throw in one suit I grudgingly wear every three years and the entire three feet, five inches allotted to me is snugly filled. The remainder of the 18 total feet of closet space in our house, has clothing belonging to other residents of our home, i.e. Sue. For the record, I measured in case these figures are challenged by anyone later. In all fairness, I am not counting the mud room closet my chore clothes, coveralls, hats, etc. share with boxes of vet supplies, a step stool and a cardboard box we’ve moved twice. No one has ever taken the time to open it to see what’s in it, but it’s in my closet.

I probably have too many clothes, anyway. The reason I was standing there so long that morning was that I couldn’t decide what shirt to wear. This, for me, is a really big deal. The shirt I select will determine my mood for the day. If I pull out one of my faded blue Wrangler work shirts, I automatically slip into work mode. I’m ready to crawl under, get on and ride or overhaul any machine, animal, animate or inanimate object on the place. The problem is, if I put on one of my work shirts, but wind up needing to stay in the office that day, it doesn’t go well. My shirt put my mind into nose to the grindstone, bring on the grime mode. Instead I’m expected to be business like on the phone, witty in my thoughts and business-like throughout. Doesn’t happen.

Conversely, if I select a button-down collar, oxford broadcloth shirt from the rack, I become “office man.” I’ll probably stop by my dresser drawer and take out the diamond wedding ring I only wear when I go into “hot stuff” mode. It doesn’t matter what comes across my desk today. I will handle it wonderfully. If I’m called outside, however, it gets ugly. Nothing I attempt will go right and ... I’ll probably ruin my shirt, too. Women complain of bad hair days. I worry about bad shirt days.

Oh, speaking of women. Remember all the exaggerations in my opening sentence? I listed two, but there was one more. I lied about the part where Sue stood silently by watching. Sue, silent? She thinks I’m nuts. This from a woman who fills most of my side of our closet with an estimated 96 blue blouses so she’ll have “just the right one!”