The Blanket Conundrum

See? Blankets are traitors. Fun one minute . . .

I was helping Mom.

Okay, I was four, so ‘helping’ might be more of a hopeful term.

We were tidying the family room.

Dusting: check. All one had to do was slide a cloth over every and all surfaces. My job was actually the pre-dusting. Getting things ready for mom’s bigger and better cloth.

Vacuuming: check. I watched and moved out of the way at strategic moments.

Window washing: check. I washed. Mom dried and got rid of my fingerprints.

Putting toys away: check. Well, maybe a tentative check. Every toy I carried to the toybox must be played with a bit before actually putting in the toybox.

Folding the blankets: check. All right, a definite no check.

Because this is where I came to grief. Those blankets were huge! At least a thousand times bigger than me! And, yes, I know I was the one who dragged them out. I mean, one can’t build much of a blanket fort without the . . . you know . . . blanket. But they were huge!

Mom! Huge!

But she insisted.

And left the room.

Rats.

I gathered the blankets up and set them on the couch.

We regarded each other with suspicion.

I mean, how can you trust something that is a friend one minute and a job the next?!

Finally, I pulled the top one off and set it on the floor. Then I saw a corner and pulled it out straight.

I saw another corner and did the same.

Hey!

I found the other two corners and pulled on them.

Soon, I had a blanket laid out flat on the floor.

I adjusted and straightened until there wasn’t a wrinkle to be seen.

I stood back and looked.

It was a thing of beauty.

Then I lifted the one corner and pulled it across, matching it to the corner opposite.

I found this technique worked better if one wasn’t standing on said blanket at the time. That definitely slowed down the process.

Just FYI.

I grabbed the second one – pulling it across to its corresponding corner.

Then I straightened and smoothed.

Eureka! I had succeeded in lessening my problem by half!

I grabbed the two corners together and pulled them down to the other two corners.

More straightening and smoothing.

This was working!

I did it again.

And again.

Finally, I had a tidy, neatly-folded bundle, just perfect for stuffing into the cupboard.

I called my mom and showed her my thing of glory.

My triumph.

My folded blanket.

She nodded and smiled.

And disappeared.

Hmm . . . sometimes moms really don’t get the stupendousness/remarkableness/amazingness/marvelousness/fabulousness/exceptionalness of what their four-year-olds have accomplished.

Moving forward fifty-some years . . .

My granddaughter had been playing with blankets.

It was time to tidy up.

She grabbed the first blanket and spread it out on the floor.

Then proceeded to fold it by matching corners.

And straightening and smoothing.

Soon she had a neatly-folded little bundle.

I blinked and stared.

Not everyone would appreciate that tidy little parcel of neatly-foldedness.

But I did.