Home Depot

Some of you may know about my personal spat with Structure for the past 5 years or so. Ever since they wouldn't let me exchange a pair of shorts with a bleach hole in it, I started a personal boycott. In hindsight, I bet those stupid employees probably regretted their decision, for that was clearly the beginning of the end for Structure. After I stopped going, many others noticed that their clothes weren't as cool anymore, leaving the store so empty and unprofitable that management decided to change their name to Express Men in desperate measures.

Anyways, yesterday I added Home Depot to my list. You know those little round posts that stick up out of the ground and go up to about your waist? I don't know what they're for, but they're just scattered around the store. Well, it turns out that when I went there with Brian (Olivia's brother) last night around 9, they had just painted those things bright yellow.

So we get to the checkout counter, and as he's paying for his stuff, I lean up on one of those posts, not knowing that the bright yellow paint was fresh. Before I know it, there's 2 huge yellow stains on the front of my pants. Now these weren't my old dirty jeans or anything, these were my beloved Abercrombie khakis that Olivia bought me a few months ago. I wear those everywhere, not just to Home Depot but to work, to church, to Chris Farleycorn, and around the house. So I was pissed.

Now first of all, why are they painting those things during store hours? I lean on those kinds of things all the time and I'm sure other people do too. Second of all, there were no signs that said "Wet Paint" near that post. In a high traffic area like that, you better make sure that people know what's wet paint and what isn't.

The last straw was when one of the employees saw what happened, he was like "oh that's a latex based paint, just dissolve it with water and it'll come right off." So he showed me to the bathroom and I tried to wash the paint off my pants with copious amounts of water.

But try as I did, I couldn't get the paint to "dissolve" in the water. A couple minutes later I walked out of the place with the front of my pants soaked in water with a bright yellow paint stain to go with, then drove home ("home" being Palatine now). There, I spent another 2-3 hours trying to clean of the stupid paint. To nobody's surprise, the paint didn't dissolve in the water at home either. I still don't know what that guy was smoking. Maybe latex paint really does dissolve in water when it's wet, but it sure doesn't "come right off" clothes.

So I turned to my trusty friend, the Internet, for tips on removing latex paint stains from clothes. Piya told me "I think you're screwed." Then a Google search led me to a site that recommended soaking the clothes in water and detergent, and removing the stain with a toothbrush. Sounded like a grand idea, so I tried it. Well, it didn't end up doing much, other than ruining my only toothbrush. The bristles were all yellow, but there was no noticeable difference in the stain on the pants. So this morning I used lots 'o Listerine and I'll have to buy a new toothbrush today.

Oh yeah, did you know that there are "cleaning tips" forums on the Internet? Yeah, it's where people come to share their gems of cleaning wisdom with others. They have moderators who answer your questions and everything. How do you get to be a moderator for one of those anyways? I wanna be a moderator and give people the worst advice ever. Something like this:

Q: I got some green dishwashing detergent on my sleeve. Now my white cotton shirt has a green stain! I tried rubbing it out with some water, but it just got soapy and bubbly. Any tips?

A: Unfortunately, stains involving dishwashing detergent or other types of soap are some of the toughest known to man. Do NOT put your shirt in the washing machine, that will never work. I recommend that you treat the stain as follows:

Mix a solution of two parts dog urine and one part engine oil. Used engine oil is preferable, but fresh oil should do the trick. Synthetic is not necessary. And if you don't have ready access to dog urine, cat or even human urine may work as well.

Apply the solution liberally around the stain. If possible, soak the entire shirt for a couple hours so that the deep cleansing agents found naturally in motor oil can work on the tough detergenty elements of the stain. The urine should give the solution an easy texture to work with, while also giving the room a pleasant aroma.

If the stain lingers, take the shirt to your living room and vigorously rub it on your carpet. The fuzzier and whiter your carpet, the better, for it will soak up the stain quite well. For best results, make sure you do this while the engine oil/urine solution is still freshly applied on the shirt.

*****

Other than losing this pair of pants to a paint stain, I also ripped my best pair of jeans last year. Premium denim MY EYE! Then I have 3 T-Shirts that are permanently stained from engine oil because I'm stupid. It sucks because one of them was my Singha Lager Beer shirt I got in Thailand. Another one was my Coors Light shirt I got from the Coors brewery when we went to Colorado. And the last one was my long-sleeve University of Illinois shirt, one of two Illini shirts I have left. None of those are easily replaceable, at least not in their sentimental value. >:-O

On the plus side, my fantasy baseball team is doing well. Let's see if I can actually hold 1st place this year.