Socks aren’t the only items to travel through time
Cave-Laundress Uma was laying the next sock on the rocks to dry, when whoosh, both she and the sock were whisked through time. The dryer door flung open with a bang, and Uma fell out onto the floor, sock in hand.
Henry rushed into the Laundry room upon hearing the noise. There, he found his wife, Henrietta, unconscious on the floor. Henry cradled his wife’s head in his arms, while gently trying to wake her. Henry never noticed that his wife was clutching onto a sock in desperation, as though her life depended on her not letting go of it. And, Henry never had any idea that the woman in his arms, wasn’t his beloved Henrietta. “Socks! Only socks!” Chronos, the God of Time, yelled at his minions. “How many times do I have to tell you only socks!? Now, I have to give Uma the ability to speak, read, and write English. And I have to give Henrietta the ability to speak Cavish. And, I have to hope that both of them are smart enough to play it dumb for a while, and not give it away, that they’re not who they seem to be. Communis (the God of Language) will, no doubt, want some of you as slaves in return for this favor. If you think I’m a harsh God, wait till you’re his slaves!”
Now that Uma had the ability to speak, read, and write English; Chronos allowed her to return to consciousness.
“Hey! You’re awake!” Henry cried, so relieved he almost let his wife’s head drop onto the floor, which would have rendered her unconscious again. Uma looked dazed, because she was. Finally, she spoke, “I don’t remember anything.” It was a lie. But apparently, she’d been captured and dragged off to a new cave. So she’d better play dumb for awhile. The fact that she was speaking and understanding English instead of Cavish, didn’t seem strange to her. Communis had taken care of that.
“It’ll come back, Henrietta.” Henry assured her with confidence. Uma gathered from that, that this man thought her name was Henrietta. Something strange was going on her, and she’d better play it dumb until she figured it out. Seeing the sock clutched in her hand, Uma remembered she’d been doing laundry. Looking around her, she saw more dirty clothes, and said, “Well, I’d better get back to doing the laundry.”
A week had passed, and Uma (now Henrietta), had figured out how to use the washer and dryer. It was not the same as beating the clothes with rocks and drying them in the sun. But at least it was more familiar than the rest of this strange cave. The first thing Henrietta had noticed about the laundry, was that there was less to do here. At first, she thought that this village was a lot smaller than her previous one. By the end of the week, she was certain that only, she and Henry lived in this cave, instead of an entire village.
It was nice only having to do laundry for two people, rather than for an entire village. These two people generated a lot more laundry than any two people would have back in the village, but still, it was less than the entire village’s laundry. On the other hand, besides just doing laundry, now Henrietta had to also do cooking and cleaning.
While Henrietta was still figuring out how to do cooking and cleaning in this new cave, Henry was helping her with them. Since there were only two of them in this cave, Henry must think that Henrietta was his wife. Henry was a lot nicer than Henrietta’s cave-husband. Umo, had never helped Uma with anything. And, Henrietta decided that Henry’s being nice to her, more than made up for the fact that he was paunchier than Umo, and not nearly as muscular. Henrietta thought that, with her help and in time, Henry could become as fit as Umo was, and then she’d have a husband who was both nice, and an Adonis. This new cave wasn’t turning out to be so bad after all, though she did miss her cave friends.
Henrietta was back in the laundry room again. It seemed like the most familiar place in the house, so she spent most of her time there. Seeing the cupboard there again, and now knowing what cupboards were, she opened it. There were several strange boxes in it. Boxes she knew held food. But the stuff in these boxes didn’t look or taste like food. They tasted and smelled horrible! Well, she had only tasted the stuff in the first box. She’d gagged so much on it, that she decided to just smell the others.
Then, she noticed the writing on the boxes and decided to read it and see what it said. The first box said Bounce. So, she threw it on the floor. Why, it didn’t bounce at all! She took the stuff out of the box and threw that on the floor. It bounced a little, but not very much at all. Henrietta decided it must not be working, so she threw it all away, without reading further. Henrietta took out the next box. Dash, it said. Henrietta threw this box away also. It wasn’t Dashing at all. In fact, it was going nowhere fast, it was just sitting there.
When Henry was taking out the garbage, he went to empty the trash in the laundry room. He picked up the garbage bag and it was so heavy, his arm almost fell off! “What has she got in here, bricks?” Henry exclaimed. He looked in the bag and found an almost full box of laundry detergent. Puzzled, Henry looked further into the bag and found the entire contents of the laundry cupboard in them.
Henry sat down at the kitchen table with his wife and asked her why she was throwing out all these entirely good boxes of stuff. Henrietta simply said they didn’t work. “What do you mean, they don’t work?” Noticing the confusion in her husband’s voice, Henrietta decided to play it dumb some more, and said, “Well, at least, I don’t remember how they work.” Henry pulled out the box of Dash, which was still just sitting there. “This is laundry detergent”, he said gently. Turning the box around, he read the directions. Henrietta sat there, trying to take it all in, trying to understand it. Then Henry pulled out the box of Bounce. “These,” he said “are dryer sheets. You throw them in the dryer and they remove the static cling.” Henry paused, wishing he could know if Henrietta was understanding any of this. She still looked confused, so he said, “And, they make the clothes smell wonderful.” Seeing the disbelief in his wife’s eyes, Henry held a sheet of bounce out toward Henrietta’s nose. Henry was about to say, “See?” but Henrietta was gagging and gasping for air. “What’s the matter?” Henry said. Henrietta who had never smelled such things in her old cave, sputtered, “They smell horrible!”
Henry drove to the store, thinking all the way, that if this amnesia didn’t clear up soon, he’d have to send Henrietta to the doctor, and perhaps to the psychiatrist. He knew their insurance wouldn’t cover that, and they really didn’t have the money to pay for those expenses out of pocket. “Well”, he thought, “Henrietta was improving.” He’d wait one more week and then, he’d have to do something. Henry still couldn’t believe he was doing this. And he still couldn’’t believe he had thrown out all that stuff in the laundry cupboard. Another expense, he’d have to work overtime to cover. But Henry would do almost anything for Henrietta and so, he was doing this.
Henrietta wanted laundry products which didn’t smell. Henry had found a couple of detergents – Tide Free, and Allergy Free All, which fit that bill. However, Henrietta had read the ingredients on the boxes of laundry products she had thrown away and had also requested something simple. Every laundry detergent Henry looked at had several ingredients, most of which he couldn’t pronounce.
At the end of his wits, Henry called his mother on his cell phone. Henry’s mother had lived through the great depression, when nobody could afford anything. Perhaps she knew how to do laundry more simply. “And”, Henry thought, “If, she knew how to do laundry more cheaply, some good might come out of this after all.”
Henry’s mother had used lye soap during the depression. But she knew a lady who knew another lady who used baking soda to do her laundry with. This same lady then used vinegar to get excess baking soda out of her clothes. Henry just told his mother that Henrietta was doing an experiment. He didn’t get into her amnesia with his mother.
“Sounds simple and cheap”, Henry thought to himself. Henry was about to leave the laundry aisle and go get the baking soda and vinegar, when he noticed a mule on one of the boxes. Borax, it said. It didn’t smell and there was only one ingredient. Near it, Henry noticed washing soda. It was something his mother had mentioned as an aside.
Henrietta felt like it was her birthday. Henry had bought her the best present any husband could bring his wife – something she really wanted. She smiled at her new laundry products – Baking Soda, Vinegar, Borax, and Washing Soda. Then she beamed at her husband. Then she smiled at her cache of laundry products again.
A few more weeks had passed and Henrietta was liking life in this new cave very much. She was even getting brave enough to go with Henry to the store in their moving cave, which Henry called a car. Henry was satisfied that Henrietta was mostly, if not all the way, recovered from her amnesia. And Henry never missed that clean laundry smell as he thought he would. In fact, the laundry now smelled clean on it’s own. It didn’t need that extra smell to alert Henry to the fact that it was clean.
Henrietta was back throwing a sock into the dryer, when whoosh, she was whisked back through time and landed on the rock. Uma awoke later. Her head hurt, and unlike the last time, her husband was not there cradling her head in his arms. Uma knew she had awakened from her nice dream. According to the sun, it had been several days, so she knew she had better get to work.
Henry thought, “Not again!” as he cradled his wife’s head in his arms. Henrietta awoke and hugged him fervently. “Ok”, Henry thought, “I won’t complain.” Later, Henrietta came out of the laundry room wondering where all the laundry products were. “You wanted something simple!” Henry exclaimed in exasperation. Noticing the puzzled look on his wife’s face, he simple muttered to himself, “It must be the amnesia again”, and proceeded to show his wife the new way to do laundry.
Chronos was extremely pleased with himself. He had let time elapse on earth, while causing a certain event to go back in time in other spheres. This way, Chronos had put people back in their proper times, although they remembered the events that had happened in the intervening weeks. Chronos didn’t really care about people. He mostly, just cared that they continue to believe that time was a straight line, instead of being a vortex. He also cared that he had lost slaves to Communis. By setting things back in time, Chronos was able to make that event to have never happened. Chronos had gotten his slaves back, and Communis hadn’t a clue that anything was different. Chronos was very pleased with himself.
But not nearly as pleased with himself as was Sensitivus (the God of Chemical Sensitivities). Sensitivus had orchestrated the whole thing. And neither Chronos, nor Communis had a clue as to what had really happened here. Sensitivus had gotten another family to use less chemically offensive laundry products, and could chalk up another victory for himself.
Book 4 My World of Cleaning
Written by Dale Stubbart Blessed by Terry Stubbart
Socks aren’t the only items to travel through time 