You know how you can make the bus come faster
Not to sound like an infomercial or anything, but nothing works on bloodstains like Oxyclean.
I do our laundry, and my daughter is rather absent-minded. Oxyclean is best, but working in regular liquid Tide has been effective on darks, at least.
my daughter is rather absent-minded.
Dude, everyone is. There are only two things I wish my mother had told me about menstruation when I was a kid: (1) Everyone ruins underwear -- it's not just you; and (2) They sell black panties for a reason.
I thought it was because black panties are sexy. I'm a fool!
Tiny little lacy black panties are sexy. Black cotton panties don't show stains.
I'm with text. Don't destroy all our illusions! Black panties are for entertainment purposes only.
In defense of my awareness of domestic realities, I meant "absent-minded" to refer to how often, not whether. Daughter/wife ratio = 4/1.
Lacy black panties also don't show stains.
6, 8: I'm just pulling your legs. Yes, the only reason any woman buys black underwear is to be enticing. (Probably a good idea to stop reading this thread if you want your illusions preserved.)
I did the cigarette trick recently, and the bus came just as I was finishing my cig! It isn't supposed to work that way, but it did. I think this means i'm free to wear white pants for a month.
But who really wants to wear white pants? I mean, where do you sit?
hooray! good one, LB, you almost had me.
Thanks, LB! All blog crushes preserved, I'm out of here. I'll be back for the mid-afternoon abortion thread.
3: When you're a teenager, chances are your period isn't very regular, and no girl wants to wear a pad for two weeks of every month just in case.
#16 and #4 are generous, sisterly defenses which warm my heart. But it seems they mostly apply to surprise arrivals. Multiple-garment stain-removal chores in the same load however, is more of a competence issue, imho. But I am disabled from pointing this out amicably, so perhaps I'm venting.
I'm just surprised the dad is doing the laundry!
When you're young, too, your period is sometimes heavier and sometimes lighter, and while it's sort of a competence issue, it takes some getting used to because it's hard to predict when you're going to be near a bathroom, and when it's okay to go running or to the mall.
May I suggest that whoever does the underwear shopping for your daughter (that is, probably the kid herself) have her attention diplomatically drawn to the harm-reduction potential of 4(2)? (perhaps through an intermediary, given the massive potential for embarrassment.)
(text, 'smasher: This is all still a put-on. I'll keep a joke like this one running indefinitely.)
I'm just surprised the dad is doing the laundry!
I do the laundry in our house. But it's 3-1 male to female.
18: Buck does well more than his fair share of laundry (and everything else) as well. I'm completely disqualified from bitching about housework issues -- I'm a slob, and Buck's tidy, and he works at home. He does probably 70% or better of all housework that gets done, which includes all of the 'management' -- knowing what we're out of, etc.
The downside of this is that given the six-inch height differential between us, whenever I do try to make myself useful, I find that everything I need is stored on a shelf so high that I can neither reach nor see it. The shelves I can see appear mostly to be used for storing sardines and dried fruit.
Isn't Ogged rolling over in his grave again? Isn't this a cock-joke forum?
Probably a good idea to stop reading this thread if you want your illusions preserved.
Somewhere, ogged is sitting with his hands over his ears, singing "The Star-Spangled Banner."
Occasionally throwing his hands in the air, and crying "Panties! Hooray!"
4(2) hath been assimilated; maroon is favored, not merely to honor the alma mater, or alternatively, treat it as it deserves--it has enough of our blood already.
I have discovered that the ingestible volume of "dad" is strictly limited within a given period of time. Relative scarcity of this quantity in my youth perhaps left me unaware of this fact.
JM, I hope you're taking notes—LB's on a roll!
Oh, and evil seventh-grade teachers who decide that because the boys use the restroom pass as an opportunity to run around the halls, no one can get more than one bathroom break a day, and you only have three minutes between classes.
Being a teenager sucks.
Don't worry, Cala. Things get a lot cooler in college.
Black cotton panties don't show stains.
I'm tempted to buy my sons brown underwear.
A friend of mine wore white pants to her graduation from junior high, and ended up having to borrow her father's sweater and wrap it around her waist the whole day.
um, okay, i have to join cala and come to the defense of daughters everywhere (though i'm surprised the daughter is letting you do this segment of her laundry...):
it's hard to figure out at first! not only are you much less regular in all sorts of ways when you're younger, as cala says, but it probably takes a year or two before you are comfortable enough to take the great big step of using tampons. which makes ALL the difference.
Being a girl seems like such a lot of extra work.
but at least their fathers don't make them perform penis stretching exercises at dawn.
#34:
That's right, I confess that I raged at my wife about the great big step, and when would it be taken already, but it wasn't pushed by us and now that it's been taken, things are better.
Our friend B is an online heroine to my daughter, and I hope that my daughter picks up the folded-and-rolled-toiletpaper trick one of these days.
I think the 'figuring out how to cope with your period' probably balances with the 'uncontrollable and obvious erections' for teenage humiliation and angst.
If it doesn't go away after a few hours, contact a medical professional, text.
You'll stopping getting them at men-o-pause, text.
Things get a lot cooler in college, text.
How about reddish-brownish camoflage-pattern panties? Sexy, patriotic, and practical too!
in law school I tried the old, "that's just a casebook in my pocket" but I don't think anyone believed me.
Assuming it's not rectangular, I'm not surprised at their skepticism.
it's those kind of assumptions that lead one to crying furiously in the law school basement.
I was a mature student, but law school seems the least likely environment of all I have ever known to present this problem. Was it something in the subject-matter I may have overlooked?
You dismiss the possible attractions of the other law students rather cavalierly, don't you?
wow. i would have committed some form of hara kiri as a teenager if i thought my parents had that much knowledge/discussion of my period. i recall getting a dozen red roses from my mom the first time it manifested, and then getting left completely alone on the subject after that...
My vivid recollection of "uncontrollable and obvious erections" is that they were never a response to the presence of any object of attraction. My law school had many such, but my response to that attractiveness was only when it was "recollected in tranquility." U&OEs, a daily high school occurance for me and also during my first months of military service, when I hadn't seen a woman, nor a man I was aware of being attracted to, for months, appear to be triggered by internal events and transactions.
#51:
This is not a preoccupation of mine, honestly, but "by their fruits shall ye know them." Without laundry and trying to clean her room, I'd be in the dark about this, as apparently seems natural.
How common is that red roses custom?
I'll be giving them to my son when he starts getting uncontrollable and obvious erections. But only the first time. Roses are expensive.
How common is that red roses custom?
Not at all, at least for the onset of U&OEs.
I'll be giving them to my son
Roses, that is. Not erections.
I hope.
53: i don't know...my mother lived in colombia for awhile and seemed to think giving red roses was a south american custom. also i think negative comparisons to her own childhood were involved.
part of the charm was the code (as well as the happy conspiratorial way she gave them to me) - i don't think my brother ever figured it out.
Yeah, s/b something a little muskier. Magnolias maybe.
61: nah. my mom and i, we like each other.
we don't mind sharing a secret or two together. was true even back when in my (eek) teenaged days.
If I had had a daughter I would have used the change of life as an opportunity to reiterate that it had been Eve who brought sin and death into the world. The local Catholic priest made the general point clear, but he wasn't able to key his talk on specific events in the lives of individual girls.
#61:you are shy, aren't you? Hurry up and have some Powder Milk Biscuits before B gets back from class.
#64:we all regret the lost opportunity.
U&OEs . . . appear to be triggered by internal events and transactions.
The phrasing of this makes me imagine Alan Greenspan saying it. Except he would probably attribute U&OEs to irrational exuberance.
And let me add that I heartily welcome "U&OEs" as a most worthy addition to our shorthand lexicon.
Thank you; I was trying for some such effect, but the thought of Greenspan saying it has me rolling on the floor.
My mom was pregnant with my little brother when I first got my period. When we were at the store that weekend, I was mortified because I was sure everyone would look in our shopping basket and see what my mother was buying and then see my mother was pregnant and realize she was buying those things for me. The horror!!
My mom and I were close, but it would be like celebrating acne or any other annoying teenage chance, except this one doesn't go away for 40 years.
But a care basket of Aleve would have been nice, except I don' think it had been invented yet.
17, 37: Hate to let you down, John, but I'm lazy about menstrual protection and such (as the rolled toilet paper trick really should have suggested) and I frequently stain more than one pair of undies in a given month. You go a couple days, figure, "eh, it's over *enough*," and then either you're right, or you're wrong.
The only way to manage this strategy, of course, is to try to use the already-stained undies on those days.
My mother actually did the "oh, you're a woman!!!" thing which was just the living end.
Roses, however, would have been nice, if I'd had that kind of relationship with her. Which, obviously, I didn't. But I wish I had.
I first got my period the day my grandfather died.
Were you at all inclined to think there was a connection?
I think that would have turned me completely superstitious.
Come to think of it, in hillbilly Kansas my sister had an acquaintance who was indifferent both to diapers and feminine hygiene. You navigated through her house very carefully.
My mom did the 'woman' thing, too. I think on balance she was more excited when I had to start wearing a bra.
On immigrating to the States in the mid-sixties, I joined a scout troop which told "Hillbilly" jokes. The punchline of the relevant one was "She's only wearing one white sock"
For years I had no idea what that meant.
My sister was given a pamphlet at school, printed by Kotex. The euphemisms were delicate, as I remember. My recollection is that she had a funny story about my mom's uselessness, but she told so many of those I've forgotten the details.
It was only years later that I looked back on the movie Parenthood and put the scene where they found the weird buzzing thing and the line "likes to have sex with machines" together, and understood in a blaze of light. At the time I thought the mom was fucking robots.
80: Those much-later moments of enlightenment are funny. I was a kid when I saw a SNL news (w/ Chevy Chase as anchor, I think) that listed a sponsor as "Colonel Lingus, the chicken that takes a lickin'."
I laughed heartily, because it sounded funny, but it wasn't until several years later that the pun made any sense.
By the way, would it be wrong for me to ask why Alameida wears a thong with jeans??
Oh, I also have the most embarrassing period-related parental insensitivity story to relate. My dad, living in a house with three women, used to get pissed off when we were all on our periods, and he'd go get the bathroom garbage, carry it out into the middle of the living room (in front of guests, if they were there), and set it down and snarl at me or my sister, "take out the trash."
Wow. Your dad was sort of "quarantined" though, wasn't he? He must have been pretty alienated.
B--That is really embarassing.
As Ogged rolls over in his blog grave, I have a question for the female readers. Does anyone understand those panty liner things? I'm not talking about pads, but liners. Are you supposed to wear them every day? Staining is bad, of course, but I get the feeling that somewhere there are women who would be upset at the thought that any bodily fluids might come into contact with their underwear.
Is this for real? Does anyone actually use these? Is it just yet another elaborate marketing campaign to convince us to buy an unnecessary product?
My understanding is that the sane use of pantiliners is for the day-before/day-after problem, when you aren't really bleeding as such, but you get enough spotting to ruin underwear.
My sisters wore panty liners at certain stages of their pregnancies.
That's all I'm coming up with.
BG:
Two different brands are in use in this house, mostly I gather for tailing-off times. Needless to say, I appreciate it.
I have dated women whose periods were light enough that a panty liner was sufficient protection for all but one day of the cycle.
89: I hate those women.
As far as I'm concerned, panty-liners are tampon back-up, just to prevent an unnecessary leak in the case of lack of bathroom access, a sneeze, overnight, etc.
89: I hate those women.
I pretty much hate one of them, but not for any menstruation-related reasons.
Panty-liners are stupid, and if you just wear the pre-stained underwear, you don't need to waste the money. Plus, unless they've improved vastly since I was an adolescent, the tape just ends up peeling off and they roll up and then the tape sticks to your pubes or if it doesn't the goddamn rolled up pantiliner drifts around inside your underwear, or maybe outside it through the leg opening, and then it gets stuck to your jeans or god forbid, if you're wearing a skirt, it falls to the floor, and.... oh, forget it. Those things are stupid.
No, dude, I'm telling you.
I have no idea what's happening in the other thread, so I'm reduced to nattering on about pantiliners. So low have I sunk.
There was a girl on the soccer team at my high school who would write notes on them with a Sharpie, peel off the backing, and stick them to all over people's windshields. You would think this was a bullying tactic but, no, they were always friendly notes like "Go [Team]! Beat [Crosstown Rivals]!"
unless they've improved vastly since I was an adolescent
Seriously, I think the adhesives have made progress. I abandoned them as a teenager for the reasons you state, and returned to using them after I got an IUD, and they're much less annoying than they used to be.
They are much better than this description; one user has no complaints and I often have to remove them from the other user's uw. No visible loosening.
97--Ew. Ewewewew.
Unless your daughter is under the age of, say, 12, I really don't see why someone shouldn't point out that if she makes doing laundry that gross, she's going to end up doing her own.
Signed,
A Non-Parent who should probably shut up about other people's families.
98- why do you assume Tingley is talking about his daughter here? Maybe it's his wife. Could be some sort of kinky foreplay thing...
I slamdunked the pantyliner thread.
Cala, "sneeze" in 90 comes as a total revelation.
Really? When you sneeze, muscles clench. When muscles clench, they squeeze.
Yep, sneezing.
JT, I'm kind of on the "she could do her own laundry" side... otoh, it's not that hard to forget to unpeel a goddamn panty liner. I did say I hated those things, right? You are a good dad for doing the laundry.
And really, is dealing with menstrual flow/staining really any worse than dealing with dribbled pee, or semen on the sheets, or any of the other bodily grossnesses that parents have to deal with in taking care even of older kids?
You know, JT, B has a point: dealing with your daughter's menstrual flow/staining is probably much better than dealing with lots of semen on her sheets.
On the grossness topic, it always bewildered me to learn that at one time, women were thought to be too delicate to be doctors because of the blood and ickiness.
I would guess women aren't the sort to faint at blood, or else we'd never get anything done.
98, 105: Yup. I would tend to take "forgets to remove pantiliners" as the international signal for 'should probably be responsible for her own laundry'.
Which, I would say, should be a general rule for teenagers. (Not that I have them yet. But in six or seven years, they are so doing their own laundry.)
they are so doing their own laundry
Good luck with that.
Teenagers so need to learn to do their own laundry. As an RA in college, I was appalled by how many people got to school without knowing how to do it. And, instead of making their kids learn how, a large percentage of parents just signed their kids up for wash & fold services.
These kids today. Get off my lawn!
wash & fold services
I didn't even realize there were such services.
I never do my own laundry. I always drop it off.
Teenagers so need to learn to do their own laundry.
Notwithstanding 109, I heartily agree with the above. 109 is simply an observation by someone who has already had one kid go through the teenage years, and who has several more knocking at the door of teenage-dom, of the ease with which teenagers are made to do things.
111 - You mostly find them in big cities. You pay a certain number of cents per pound of laundry. When I lived on Long Island for a summer, it was actually cheaper to send our clothes out for wash & fold than pay to do our own laundry at the laundromat. They give your clothes back to you in a big compact bricklike formation, which always amused me. It's like "I have to get ready for work. I'd better chisel off some underwear."
I started doing my own laundry as a teenager. When I came to college I was amazed at how many people had no idea how to do it.
115: The plan isn't to make them do the laundry by force, it's simply to stop doing their laundry, and to provide them with detergent. If they do their laundry, fine -- if they fail to, that'll be difficult for them.
re: 116
Being an idealist, I greatly admire optimists.
Not sure what 116 has to do with my comment, but I heartily endorse it. Strangely, I've never heard of anyone doing that. And I should admit that doing my own laundry was entirely my own idea and my parents had nothing to do with it (and my sister didn't follow suit).
Teenagers so need to learn to do their own laundry.
Ha! You're funny. As I teenager, I would have just worn clothes in progessively worse states of squalor and filth until my mother washed them out of embarrassment.
I suspect 119 is the reason that I've never heard of anyone using the plan in 116.
I didn't do my own laundry as a teen because it all got done in one big batch on the weekend. I was responsible for folding the laundry, though, which is the labor-intensive part of the task anyhow. Washing and drying hardly amounts to a task, beyond the initial sorting; big machines do all the work.
To this day, I insist on doing the folding, because there's a *correct* way to do it, goddammit, and no woman I've ever lived with has come pre-loaded with that mystical knowledge. Folding laundry is one of the very few anal retentive corners of my personality. I can make fitted sheets look like they just came out of the package.
116 should have been to 113. And to 119 -- I'm difficult to embarrass, and have very low standards of cleanliness. I figure I can outwait the average teenager. (Particularly based on their revealed characters so far. Sally inherits my sloveliness, but is vain (with every justification, but she's going to need a certain amount of tidiness to carry off vanity as a teen), and Newt takes after his father in catlike fastidiousness.)
119 describes me as a teenager, but then that was the early 1990s. I used to sneak my favorite dirty and torn jeans out of the house in my bookbag because my parents were so horrified that I would go to school looking like a bag lady. (Now, of course, they claim that they were happy about grunge because it saved them a lot of money.)
I was a very fastidious teenager; my mom used to make fun of me for washing jeans after only wearing them once. I can't remember quite why I started doing my own laundry, but I suspect part of it was that my dad* didn't do it often enough for my taste.
*That's right. He also cooked, cleaned and did the grocery shopping.
Yeah, mine was the mid-to-late 80s, but I insisted on jeans that were in tatters.
I vote against the "do your own, personal laundry" plan but in favor of the "you live in this household, you pitch in. Do you want to do laundry or clean the bathroom?" plan.
I cleaned the bathroom, too. Although I'll admit that it took some parental coercion.
My mother subscribed to the "everyone pitch in" school of thought on laundry, as well as the "children should learn how to be self-sufficient" school of thought on childrearing. So I was helping out with household laundry and cooking dinner by age 11 or 12 (as was my brother). That was around the same time that my parents decided my brother and I were old enough to stay at home by ourselves in the summer, and we were assigned chores to do each day.
We had two-bathroom house and my brother and I were each responsible for cleaning one once a week.
When I was about eight, I asked about allowance, which all of my friends got. My father decreed that we would get a dollar a week if we practiced the piano every day and did our chores. However, not doing a chore or skipping piano would subtract $.25 for each infraction from the allowance. The problem was that he didn't stop at zero. So, we never brought up allowances after that, and we evaded chores unless my mother wrote out a list of specific things she wanted done that day.
Probably not a good model.
Similar to teofilo, my brother was the neat one. I always tried to talk my way out of cleaning my room by saying that I was reading a book, and didn't my parents want to encourage reading? Of course, I read constantly, so there was no time in which I was not reading a book.
I was quite popular in college for being the only male on the floor who knew how to iron a shirt or a pair of pants. I came to the rescue on the anti-wrinkling front for my roommates many times. Thanks, dad!
Apostropher, is there any way you can describe your fitted sheet folding technique? I've never been able to get it to work. I even tried following Martha Stewart's instructions to no avail.
Apo, apparently I've totally forgotten that we grew up together, because your chore regimen matches mine to a T. It's the southern roots I think.
In the college dorms I inadvertently discovered (and I'm really sorry to admit this) that if you put your clothes in the dryer on the second (all girls') floor and left them for hours (as is the prerogative on the all guys' floor), you would return to find them folded. This was a slightly guilt-inducing but workable strategy for a time, until I realized all too late that if you in fact wear the clothes that others are constantly folding for you, you will be recognized in them.
You're really going to enjoy college, Cala, it's a real learning experience.
I realized all too late that if you in fact wear the clothes that others are constantly folding for you, you will be recognized in them.
Oh, I am SO glad that this strategy had its own natural consequences.
I have always wanted to know how to fold a fitted sheet. They defeat me.
I have a friend who always irons everything, even when he was in the dorm at college. Although it's due to OCD as much as anything else, I suspect.
I've found that hanging stuff up right after it gets out of the dryer keeps it wrinkle-free enough for me. But I'm not that picky.
Wait, isn't Armsmasher in his mid-twenties? Up to the eighties, maybe I can imagine young women folding up neatly some random person's abandoned laundry, but in the late nineties/early noughts? I can hardly bring myself to touch even the clean laundry occupying the machines I need to use.
And my favorite anti-wrinkle measure is line-drying clothes.
I had someone folding my laundry for me even last year. The folder was almost certainly a graduate student or post-doc of East Asian origin, or perhaps the wife of one.
And I always say, post-docs do a damn good job folding clothes.
I didn't do my own laundry before I went off to college; my mom always nattered on about it being a waste of water for me to do my own, which conveniently neglects that I could have done my siblings, too, so I think a) she worried I'd ruin the family's clothes and b) felt like it was her mom thing to do.
I knew how though. Some of the guys' dorms didn't even have washers & dryers. One guy I knew said it was because guys were supposed to use the laundry service or get girlfriends to do it.
I can't wait for college, 'Smasher! I'm sure I'll make lots of friends and broaden my horizons, and have a 4.0 GPA.
I've found that hanging stuff up right after it gets out of the dryer keeps it wrinkle-free enough for me. But I'm not that picky.
Yeah, me too.
I'm sure I'll make lots of friends and broaden my horizons
Also, sex. You'll find that it's actually quite pleasurable.
Apostropher, is there any way you can describe your fitted sheet folding technique?
Yes. Unstoppable.
135: Not every day, God no. But for example, on the morning of our graduation, I set up the ironing board in our suite's common room and my roommates lined up with their khakis. Good times.
145: I believe that comment obligates you to make an awesome clip-art based comic.
When I was at college (graduated 1990) it was quite the done thing to fold other people's laundry if you had to remove it from the dryer. I did the same in every apartment I ever lived in that had shared laundry facilities. If you remove the clothes and don't fold them, they end up all wadded up and wrinkled. It's one of those small courtesies that tends to make the neighbors not hate you....
Bon Voyage, Bphd.
I once flummuxed a young woman with whom I was doing laundry by neatly folding a fitted sheet. The only reason I knew how--my mother never did it either--was that it had come out of the package that way, and the trick was obvious.
148: Not only have I never done this, it's never occurred to me to do so, not ever having it done for me. And if someone did fold up my neglected laundry, I'd be embarrassed and not a little weirded out. I forgot to collect my laundry promptly: I'm expecting it to be wrinkled.
Am I alone here?
I'm right there with you. (a) If I abandon my laundry for long enough that it's in your way, I'm supposed to suffer the wrinkled clothes and (b) don't touch my underwear.
don't touch my underwear
Except as necessary to remove it from the dryer, which I need, I hope?
If your abandoned clothes are in the drier I'd like to use, how am I supposed not to touch your underwear even incidentally? I refuse to bring tongs to the laundry.
Or do you mean, don't leave any evidence of having touched your underwear.
Except as necessary to remove it from the dryer, which I need, I hope?
And such dresser-drawer fondling as gratification may require.
152, 153: Sure, remove my clothing en masse from the dryer and leave it on a folding table, just don't sort through it.
I'll generally fold the alien laundry unless it has a lot of underwear in it. I can see that the creepiness factor would outweigh the courtesy. Of course, one could always just steal the underwear.
I should just let Matt post.
(Although I'll admit that when someone has removed my laundry en masse from the machine, I'm still a little grossed out. I recognize that this is irrational.)
My 159 was to LB's 156. Mo, you do? Are you serious? Is it just the New Yorkers against the more civil?
It might be a New York thing -- New York manners run toward "interfere with me as little as possible without my consent" rather than "do what you like as long as your intentions are good." I don't think that makes us less civil, just differently so.
I haven't thought about shared-laundry etiquette in a long time. I remember being disinclined to even open the door of a washer or dryer with someone else's stuff in it. And of sitting in a laundry room with every machine stopped, yet willing to wait until somebody came back to move their own stuff. And of sometimes myself coming back to the complaints of others that they'd had to wait, so that it wasn't just me who wouldn't touch somebody else's laundry without severe provocation.
160: Nope. I'm from Texas, and I don't fold strangers' laundry when they leave it in the dryer. If it's a communal situation in which I know the person, I have been known to fold it.
Incidentally, what do you do when there's no place to put dry unclaimed laundry? I needed to use the dryer at my apartment complex a few months ago, and I stacked the clean clothes from the dryer on my laundry bag because the top of the dryer was really disgusting. The person who picked up the clothes also took my laundry bag, which I have yet to see again.
I greatly preferred finding my underwear folded. Once or twice freshman year I went upstairs to collect my folded clothes only to find the underwear in a wad near the neat piles of crisply folded shirts and pants. And sure, I was a bit miffed. Let's show some pride in our work, ladies!
Was it only because you knew that a girl had been folding your underwear, Smasher? What if this was the boys' floor? How would you feel about knowing that a guy had folded your underthings? Would the satisfaction of crisply folded underwear outweigh the fact that a dude had had his hands all over your boxers?
I never thought much about the risk of catching the ghey, if that's what you're asking, since no freshman male would ever consider folding underwear, neither his own nor anyone else's.
Oh, I figured you wouldn't be the type to worry about catching teh ghey. There's just something about a strange guy folding my underthings that I wouldn't like. I asked myself if that was because I was a woman and thought, no, I wouldn't want a strange guy folding my underwear if I was a guy, either, but couldn't quite figure out why. Just thought I'd throw it out there.
I might hate laundry more than most—it is by far my least favorite routine, and I was willing to pretty much act like a weasel for a year in college to get out of it. I'd rather just about anyone fold my clothes.
Returning to the "feminine products" topic, this is funny.