Folding Towels

    As I was reading through the article on escapism that I just posted, it brought some examples to mind of weird, over-the-top things I would get screamed at or punished for.

    It might seem weird that the author refers to it being "wrong" if a target doesn't have the same personal tastes as the controlling person, or that to the controller tasks have to be done "their way" to be "right."  Well yeah, it's weird.  It's weird because it really happens and being on the receiving end of it is completely bizarre.

    Let's talk about bathroom towels.  Folding them, to be more specific.  I have been folding laundry since I was four or five (my first job was to fold the cloth baby diapers).   At some point between the ages of 8 and 12 I started folding towels, as well.  I'm not sure why they weren't included earlier, but I remember watching my mom fold towels and being kind of enchanted with the way she did it.  She did and still does a more elaborate fold than a lot of people, similar to how they do it in hotels.   When the job got turned over to me she showed me how to do it and went upstairs.  I set to work folding them but because it was a complicated process I got it wrong but didn't realize it.  I was excited to show her the good job I was doing when she came downstairs to check on my work and she had a complete screaming fit about the sloppy job I had done.  It was all about how unless it was done this particular way it looked trashy, people who don't fold them this way don't care about how things look and I was belittled for not getting it right.  Never mind that maybe I just needed to do it under her guidance a few times for it to set in to my brain.  Better yet, just don't worry about it and just thank the child for the towels getting folded, however they're doneIt was pretty devastating to me and I practiced and practiced until I got it right and it was second nature to me to fold them that way.

    Imagine my shock when I had roommates and later a husband who, not one of them, folded their towels the "right way."  My husband was actually really proud of the way he folded towels because he had figured out on his own how to fold them the way the hotels do (my mom's way looks pretty but is a different technique). He was folding laundry one day and I was like, "Why did you fold the towels like that?  That's not the right way to fold them."  That was one of our stupid "which way should the toilet paper hang" discussions that newlyweds have, and now I feel really bad about that.  His way looks very pretty, as well (actually I think it looks even nicer than her way), but there is this compulsion with me that they HAVE to be folded the other way because I got in so much trouble for them not being perfectly done in that manner. At one time several years ago I started purposely folding them the way my husband did just to try and break free from the feeling of being controlled, but old habits die hard.  I think I may try that again, telling myself that "This is the pretty way that some nice people like to fold their towels." It's so stupid, really.  It doesn't matter.  How ridiculous is it that a 46-year old woman feels like she needs to purposely fold towels differently from her mother just to make a point?  It's not like she knows what my linen closet looks like, she's not going to be in my house to check it, etc.

As I got older I found towels folded the "wrong way" in the linen closet and she would wave it off, saying that one of my siblings did it and not to sweat it.  And THAT is just one more element to why things seemed so bizarre to me.  Rules that applied to me, whether they made sense or not and with no allowance for variation regardless of my aptitude, the age appropriateness or whatever, did not apply to others.  You know, because it wasn't bizarre enough in the first place just to deal with her version of what was "right"--switch it up so that it's only "right" some of the time and for certain people.