Day 38: The Shedding Snuggie

I was gung-ho about snuggies from the start. When all of you blanket purists were deriding the snuggie and its glorious genius, I was there recounting all the times I've fought a blanket to stay on while I tried to read.  I will admit, they look pretty stupid, but how fashionable do you expect to make what is essentially a backwards robe?  Comfort over beauty, people.  These things were a gift from God, a God who hates it when he's trying to drink hot chocolate and his arms get cold because the damn blanket won't stay up.  Still, with all my verbal support for the snuggie, I never actually bought one.  Much like noise-canceling headphones and tans, I simply resigned myself to envying others who had one.

Then the snuggie went viral, and out came the knock-offs.  My favorite of the knock-offs was the slanket.  I would guess, judging from the byline on their website (supposedly, "The Original Blanket with Sleeves"), that the name is meant to be a clever fusion of the words sleeves and blanket, but to be truthful, it sounds a lot more like the words skank and blanket hooked up after a party.  When I hear the name slanket, I cannot help but envision an at-best mildly-attractive "lady of the night," reading paperback romance novels on the porch of a bordello, her fake nails getting caught in the cheap seam-work of her slanket's sleeves as she imagines herself whisked away by some handsome gentleman, like in Pretty Woman.  In my imagination, every prostitute is Julia Roberts or wants to be Julia Roberts.  Also in my imagination, there is a Colonel Sanders on every chicken farm, surveying the prospects as he puffs on a cigar.  But don't judge me based on my imagination, or on my delusional ideas about how chicken farms are run.

By Christmas that year the Snuggie debuted, the commercials were coming on constantly.  There were people buying them up left and right, and even more people making fun of them.  I was neither, but I ended up with one anyway when a student handed me a large box marked with a knock-off name I can't even remember.  Despite the lack of brand name, and the fact that one of my coworkers got a Saints-themed snuggie (the jealous has not subsided), I was thrilled.  No more tucking edges, no more cold shoulders (the literal kind, anyway), no more contorting my body to keep up a blanket!  Just pure, blissful couch-worthy warmth!

After raving to my roommate about it and calling my mother to tell her the good news (you'd thought I'd won twenty bucks in the lottery), I settled into my old hand-me-down couch to watch a television show or two and quickly found out two things they don't tell you on the box.  First, this blanket with sleeves is like North Face's best arctic-weather sleeping bag.  The thing traps in every ounce of heat your body puts out.  Before the first show was over, I was crawling out of it, gasping for cold air on my poor, overheated skin.  Second, this blanket--a knock-off's knock-off--sheds worse than a cat lady's feline fan club.  After pulling the thing off me, I stood up to find chunks of the tan fabric clinging to my clothes.  It took half a lint roller to get it all off, and the rest had to be swept up off the floor.  I tried washing and drying the thing, hoping that would get the rest of the excess "fur" off, but instead, I ended up with a full lint trap and my clothes once again coated with the stuff.

Eventually, I had to retire this blanket with sleeves, and yet somehow, it did not end up in the trash.  When I found it today in the stairwell we use for storage, I accidentally held it up to me and came away with a few more lint balls.  Now more than ever, it's clear to me, I am destined to a lifetime of delicately handled hot chocolate and awkward reading positions, all to get that perfect balance of comfort and warmth.  Sorry, snuggie, it just wasn't meant to be.