To Be a Clueless Idiot

We were sorting through cupboards, cleaning off shelves, re-arranging closets all day -- and in the midst of the day's work I found one of these scrub puffs. It is now hanging in the shower to use with shower gel I received as a gift. I betcha I can figure out how to do it. I hope.

You see, technology and I are not exactly compatible. I've mastered the cruise control on the car. I can make a DVD play, but if I want to pause or rewind, it takes some pondering and trial-and-error. Not a clue how to work the little iPod knock-off Julie gave me; Andrew will help me with it later. But c'mon, doncha think I should be able to advance beyond washcloths all the way up to scrub puffs???

Now I look back at the Christmas present I bought for my sister-in-law one year and am mortified. Because of our financial situation, Christmas gifts are few and small. That year we were trying to keep expenses to $10-20 or less for other families on our list. I'd thought of making my own gift baskets of soaps and lotions and all that jazz. #1 clue it was doomed to failure -- I just don't do pretty. I can try, but it flops. Making a gift basket really is about "pretty." But then there was #2 reason. Because we'd chosen some other gifts for my brother's family, I started to cut back on the idea of the gift basket, y'know, needing to cut out a couple of items.

I knew those scrubbie-guys were in all the soap/lotion gift baskets at the store. They seemed pretty exotic to me, a person who uses boring old washcloths for bathing, for house-cleaning, for wiping babies' bottoms, etc etc. So I ended up buying just a scrubbie-puff for my sister-in-law's present. Poor Tina! She was so kind. Her eyes showed a bit of confusion. But dumb me -- I didn't understand. Now that my girls have grown up and learned a few things (from other people! not me!) about the ways of the feminine world, I see that Tina must have been thinking the scrub puff was a joke present, or maybe that there was something I'd forgotten to include in the package. But she was kind and gracious and said thank you, for what was essentially just a "washcloth."

I wonder if there will ever come a day when seeing those scrub-puffs hanging in a shower doesn't remind me of what a clueless idiot I was in that situation, and how gently Tina put up with it.