By Sue Murphy
I bought new towels last week. My old ones were beginning to look like dog washing rejects, so I treated myself to a shelf-full of fluffy new ones. Now, all that fluff is good, but the outer layer is prone to sloughing off during your first shower, so I always give towels a good pre-washing. First, however, I have to take off the tags.
I don’t like tags. Clothing tags irritate my neck. Towel tags are just plain irritating. They have no real use except to tell me the name of the company that made them (noted) and how to wash them, but after you buy your first set of towels, you’ve pretty much got that down. Tags are superfluous and at my house, they have to go.
Each new towel had three tags – a brand name fabric label, a paper tag that held the price, and a tiny adhesive circle that gave me the number of the inspector who made sure that the tags and the towels were good to go. The fabric tags were sewn on. The paper tags were attached with those clear plastic Buttoneer T-string jobs, which are very handy for the store and probably great fun to attach, but a pain in the neck for customers to detach. If you snip them too close, you can nick the fabric. Too far, and you leave yourself with a permanent barb. Even with a well-placed snip, the two T-halves spring out in opposite directions and end up down the sink or embedded in the carpet.
Still, knowing Future Susan would thank me later, I got out my scissors and started de-tagging. Along the way I discovered that each numbered inspector had a different way of attaching the tags. My favorite was #29. She put the plastic T-strap through the fabric tag and stuck her inspector sticker neatly on the fabric underside every single time, making the tag removal a quick, one snip maneuver. Not so much #11. Her plastic straps were nowhere near the fabric tag and the inspector stickers were all over the washcloth map. Obviously, #11’s heart wasn’t in her work.
All this detagging made me think of newlyweds who will be getting their first sets of big fluffy towels. They’ve been showered with such gifts for months, and they think they are ready to set up house. But every one of those gifts will have a tag on it. If the gifter is prudent, she might remove the price tag, but there will be other tags, or worse, stickers. Before the new Mr. and Mrs. Smith can use their new gravy boat, they’ll have to remove the sticker from the bottom, same with the ice bucket and the chip-and-dip tray and the espresso machine. Those 12-place settings of china? Stickers galore.
Stickers are worse than tags because they are, well, sticky. Sometimes, if you’re really careful, you can peel them off in one piece. But more often than not, they come off in layered shreds. It used to be that a good soak would take care of all this, but the glue people got smarter and now no matter what you do, you end up with a sticky residue that has to be goo-ed to be gone. I suspect that the glue and the goo people are one and the same. Ah well, never look a gift horse (or gravy boat) in the mouth.
To all of you newlyweds out there, I send my heartiest congratulations. I wish you all the love and joy and happiness your hearts can hold. I also wish you the kind attention of #29. You’re going to need it.