But it was on sale ...

I've been out of laundry detergent for a WEEK. As anyone who wears clothes knows, that's enough of a backlog of dirty socks and underwear to set-dress for Hoarders. I was just too darned busy to get to the store and buy soap, you know? So last night the whole family went to Wal-mart – I know, big-time excitement. Part Ringling Brothers, part You Tube, a trip to Scrawl-mart is about as close to Disneyland as it gets in this house.

That bargain-seeking fever hit us as soon as we walked through the front doors and into the loving arms of the blue vested, blue haired, arthritis-adled Wal-nuts greeter. I snatched the flyer from her trembling fingers and almost knocked her down in my rush to the Hoover Dam sized display of Gain laundry goop sitting right across from the $6 pre-roasted chickens. (Question: how come the pre-cooked chickens cost less than the raw ones in the meat department? Anyone?)

Gleefully I plucked bottle after bottle of liquid Gain from the display and tossed it cavalierly into my cart.

"It's on SALE," I squealed.

"Better get SOME MORE," said Dave, his toothpaste-white teeth glinting like a tart salesman's eyes at a bingo hall.

And so we put lots and lots of Gain in our cart. We were gaining, one might say, a plethora of fresh-scented bargoons and we were delirious with consumeristic joy.

That was yesterday.

Today I heard bad words coming from the room we euphemistically call the laundry department.

"FECK," said Dave, only he didn't say feck.

"Oh dear," I thought. Musically. "What can the matter be?" After I pondered why Johnny was so late at the fair and who Johnny was anyway, I rushed to the Maytag to see.

Dave was standing in front of the washing machine holding one of the many containers of Gain.

"It's fecking FABRIC SOFTENER," he said. I looked at him like he had two heads so he said it again. Only this time he pointed to the bottle of Gain, like he was a professor, the Gain was a blackboard and I was the kid wearing the dunce cap in the front row. "It's. Fabric. SOFTENER."

Realization dawned. We had bought six bottles of fabric softener when what we needed was detergent. Even more ridiculous, we had bought a bottle of Downy fabric softener to go along with our Gain fabric softener.

Final score: fabric softener 7; detergent zip.

Our clothes will be filthy this week but they'll be softer than a baby's bottom.

Come to think of it, they'll be as smelly as a baby's bottom, too. Le sigh.