There are certain memories in life that may be meaningless but find a way to plague you for many unnecessary years. Some of these include times where I've been caught talking badly about someone, where I was dressed amazingly inappropriate for a function, or that time when I fell backwards off a bike rack and hit my head, while managing to still have my feet wedged in the gaps (maybe I'm a bit on the clumsy side).
A situation which I have looked back on many times and grimaced at the thought of happened years ago when we lived in Utah. Mark and I had been married a couple of years and Eli was only a few months old. We had several friends come to stay with us. One of them got to sleep on a nice bed in the guest room while the other had to sleep on an air mattress on the floor in Eli's room (Eli slept with us. We were not so mean as to make our friends sleep in the room with a baby). His visit was last minute so I quickly inflated the bed and threw sheets on it. He stayed for a few days then left. When I went to clean up his bed, I noticed a particularly rank smell. I was confused. Was it that this guest had bad personal hygiene? Then I was able to place the smell (ah ha!). It was the same smell that comes from the rotten rags that you leave by the side of your sink; the smell that gets on your hands after you touch it and pisses you off all day, even though you repeatedly wash your hands. The sheet I gave him to lie on every night and cover up with was putrid with stink (or stank, if you will).
Before you start shaking your head at our disgustingness, let me offer up an excuse (though it is a bad one). When we first got married, we were both irresponsible and just getting our footing in the whole world of house chores. Sometimes I would put a load of laundry in and leave it there for days before I would remember it again. Most of the times I would just run the wash again and no problem, but every now and then, a load slipped past. Then you would be sitting at work and would smell something strange and realize it was your pants (just as a note, we no longer have the rotten laundry problem, we are officially adults now). Well, on that day, the sheets had managed to make their way out of the rotten load and onto his bed without my notice. As I rolled them into a ball, I cringed at the thought of what he must have been thinking of us. I wanted to call him and explain, but we really didn't have that kind of relationship.
So now, years later, I still can't let it go. Maybe I should send him a card and mention it at the bottom like, "haha, remember when..." Good thing we live in such a small house now, that no one can stay with us and be suffocated in stinky sheets, while being attacked by two quarrelsome, annoying cats, and have their sleep interrupted by a shrieking baby in the middle of the night and an amazingly loud toddler at dawn (except those gluttons for punishment who are related to us).
Maybe we should open a bed and breakfast...
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