Photo: Sebastian Panache
Segregation is alive and well at the Gravelle residence. White towels upstairs; coloured towels downstairs.
“I was shocked, I admit, the first time it was pointed out to me,” Randy Gravelle admits, “but I am not a racist. It’s purely for practical reasons.”
Gravelle, 36, claims that his first wife was frustrated at his inability to keep a reasonable quantity of towels on each floor of their two storey home. Her solution: keep colours separated by floor.
“If anyone’s racist, it’s her,” he adds, conceding that her slogan ‘White up one flight, brown goes straight down’ should have made him “more concerned.”
Angela Harman, Gravelle’s ex-wife, defends her habit as an inheritance from her own childhood. “My mom used to be frustrated that we could never get our towel populations right. The upstairs closet was practically empty while the basement was filled to burst point. I’m just passing along what was taught to me.”
Indeed, as we traced laundry handling patterns down through generations of the Harman bloodline—and many others—Mooseclean’s researchers noticed a trend.
“It does seem that some families sublimated their dissatisfaction with the desegregation movement by perverting common human chores, like doing laundry, into divisive, subversive activities.” observed Michelle Gentry, Professor of Humanities at Athabasca University, “It may take many more generations before these are rooted out.”
Dr. Gentry implored forgiveness and understanding to prevail. “It’s a historical artifact; one we will overcome. Help the people you know to learn, understand, and grow beyond it.”