Column: Messing With Hangers

by Woody

My new memoir WOODEN & ME is available here at Amazon

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Clothes On Floor Is Hanging Offense

How many times has your mother, wife or significant other, asked (pronounced “told”) you, “Will you please hang up your clothes!”?

Personally, I lost count at about six – age 6, that is.

Had I a quarter for every time I have heard that exasperated complaint I could hire a butler to pick up after me.1hangers

To be honest, I’m not all that bad at putting clothes away in dresser drawers.

And I’m flat out good at putting my clothes away on chairs. I can drape, layer and stockpile clothes enough for a week on a single chair and another week’s worth on the seat and handlebars of an exercise bike. A circus performer spinning plates on sticks should have such a gift of balance.

But I have yet to master the art of using clothes hangers. I haven’t checked my symptoms on Web M.D. but I think I might be afflicted with “hangerphobia” or perhaps even “hangerexia nervosa.”

Males are especially susceptible to both Oscar Madison-like maladies, although females are not immune. Teenage girls are proof of this; spiders and snakes frighten many less than handling do hangers.

Let’s face it, hangers can be very scary lurking in dark closets, hanging like one-legged bats with wings spread before attacking unsuspecting hands. Moreover, they often strike in pairs, groups and bunches.

Unlike socks that mysteriously disappear in the dryer, hangers, like rabbits, seemingly multiply overnight. Two explanations for this phenomenon are that hangers are reincarnated lost socks or perhaps hangers simply have no natural predators to thin the herd.

Well, they now have one – me!

Just once I would like to reach into my bedroom closet and grab a single hanger and pull it out without 13 cousin hangers clamping onto my wrist like a school of hungry piranha.

Hangers apparently thought Ben Franklin was talking about them when he said, “We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately.”

Separating the wire pretzels, which always seem in the midst of a spirited game of Twister, is no simple task. Rubik’s Cube is far easier to solve. Nerves of steel alone won’t suffice. Patience and reason are all but useless.

A short temper, however, helps. Brute force is what hangers most respect. A wild, shaking motion – similar to the one used to dislodge a piece of gum from your fingertip – is the most effective method for separating clustered hangers.

After you finish playing 52-hanger pickup, you must select the right hanger for the specific job. This is no small task as the variety of hanger designs is matched only by the curses they invoke.

Heavy and sturdy. Thin and frail. Metal, wood, plastic and composites of the three. Some swivel, some don’t. But all raise one’s blood pressure, especially the thief-proof hotel hangers.

Thin wire hangers are ill-suited for anything, sans perhaps T-shirts – and who hangs up a T-shirt? Drape a pair of jeans on one of these wimps and the sucker will bend and sag in the middle.

However, if you have locked your keys in the car, thin is in and this is your best choice for breaking in.

Plastic hangers are fine for most things except men’s jeans, but are also more expensive and, in my experience, prone to being hogged by one’s wife.

Chin-up bar gauged metal hangers rate 5 Stars for everyday use. In fact, three out of four dry cleaners recommend these.

Tailors, on the other hand, endorse the use of wooden hangers for sports coats and dress pants.

Another choice to prevent leaving a crease across pant legs is a hanger with a cardboard tube along the bottom. Unfortunately, the cardboard invariably bends or detaches, causing the pants to fall to the floor and get numerous creases.

My advice is to avoid these fragile hangers and skip the problem altogether by tossing your clothes directly onto the floor yourself.

Indeed, I find these hangers, actually all hangers, annoying – even more so than being asked (told), “Will you please hang up your clothes!”

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Woody Woodburn writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com.

Wooden-&-Me-cover-mock-upCheck out my new memoir WOODEN & ME: Life Lessons from My Two-Decade Friendship with the Legendary Coach and Humanitarian to Help “Make Each Day Your Masterpiece”