There I was, doing laundry for my family on a Saturday morning and feeling like a helpful, considerate father. I even braved my teenage daughter’s bedroom to collect her laundry. She had work that day and homework, and I thought I was helping her out. I pictured the rapturous thanks I would get.
Well, it turns out that that dirty laundry on the floor was no ordinary laundry.
It was my daughter’s Lululemon yoga pants. Did you know that Lululemon yoga pants cost $100? I myself did not. I also did not know that you are not supposed to put expensive yoga pants into the clothes dryer. Apparently they respond by pilling up into a thousand little microscopic pills.
Did I ever think that I would spend my Saturday morning picking pills from my daughter’s Lululemon yoga pants? That would never have occurred to me—until it actually happened.
Here I thought I was helping with the household chores and that she would thank me for it!
I went from feeling proud of being a fully engaged dad doing laundry to being soundly reprimanded by my daughter for ruining a $100 pair of yoga pants when everybody knows you don’t put them in the dryer. Everyone but me, I guess.
My daughter was really mad at me about those yoga pants. When she confronted me—and after I said I was sorry—I calmly asked her what she was trying to get out of the conversation when she approached it in such an accusatory way. She ran upstairs and then off to work.
I imagined her recounting the story to her co-workers. Did they gasp and comfort her by telling her that all dads are losers like hers?
Yet there I stayed, picking those little pills out. Maybe I’m not a loser, but a big pushover?
—Anonymous Dad