This Year Santa Brought The Sham Wows: White Elephants Conquered

I last left off my struggle with White Elephants by noting I had in my possession, in a translucent plastic Walgreens bag on my kitchen counter, a 20 pack of Sham Wows, the As Seen On TV wonder towels with a life expectancy equal to roughly three of my own and reputed to be able to absorb the contents of an Olympic grade swimming pool. These were to be my contribution to our office White Elephant Exchange and Hopefully (if we all remember to bring something) Potluck Luncheon in our boardroom on December 22nd.

I had these on my counter because every other White Elephant I purchased wound up as a gift to myself, my having no willpower whatsoever, a ridiculous affinity for semi-useless items advertised on television, a penchant for believing all the advertising I read, or (most likely) all of the above. In short, the ‘Amazing Blanket with Sleeves’ in a zebra print? Something I had to keep for those chillier evenings when I’m deeply involved in a Lifetime Television for Women movie and too lazy to go get an actual blanket to wrap up in. The ‘Amazing Blanket With Sleeves For Dogs: Keeps your Body Warm And Your Paws Free!’? It’s Basil’s. At least we match when we’re watching that movie. The ‘Incredibly Soft and Luxurious Throw Blanket’? Thrown luxuriously over the back of my favorite reading chair. You begin to see the problem. The 20 pack of Sham Wows were intended to be the one gift I absolutely wouldn’t want to keep for myself.

Since that posting the situation has changed. It changed because I spilled coffee on a cashmere blend sweater while paying more attention to conversation than to my beverage at a luncheon last week, and I hand-washed the resultant stain from the sweater that evening. I was finishing up the rinse when I remembered one of the photos from the box of Amazing Sham Wows, namely, the photo of a wet sweater being laid on a large Sham Wow and then rolled into a tube. Something short of five minutes or so later, the sweater was almost completely dry. I’m sure you can see where this story is going, so I won’t give you too many details except to say in something short of five minutes my sweater was as close to dry as anything put in a dryer for a full cycle and I was not only a Sham Wow convert but the proud owner of 20 of them.

Which left nothing for the White Elephant exchange but at the time, I was so excited about this wonder towel I didn’t care. I didn’t care even more when, the next morning, I realized I could continue my old folly of ‘towel-drying’ my hair before using the blow dryer, a process that left my hair as damp and unruly as the towel I’d wrapped it in, or I could dry it with a Super Sized Sham Wow. For anyone who’s never tried this, I can only say that Sham Wow is this close to making the blow dryer obsolete and I’m amazed every time I dry my hair. All that water, somehow absorbed by this astounding orange towel made somewhere in Germany (which begs the question, why are all the really good products made in Germany? Why did it take Germany to make Sham Wows, when the best we Americans seem to come up with are ‘Quicker Picker Uppers’ like Bounty? For the record, it would take two rolls of Bounty to dry just one section of my hair. Just once, I’d like to be in the “As Seen On TV” aisle and find something truly awesome with a label that read, ‘made in Cleveland’) that still didn’t need wringing out. I don’t know where the water goes once it’s absorbed, I really don’t. All I know is, I hang the Sham Wow on the towel rack and it dries itself as if by some miracle or something, in a matter of minutes.

I’ve become a Sham Wow devotee and stand completely ready to put them to all kinds of uses, now that I’ve seen for myself how truly amazing they really are. Possibilities abound. Maintenance fee (passed into my HOA fee) for draining and cleaning the pools? That’s going by the wayside, just as soon as I drop a super-sized Sham Wow in each one, is what I’m thinking.

I felt ridiculous enough being so pleased by a zebra print blanket with sleeves, so pardon me while I confess to being more ecstatic over these Sham Wows than I’ve been over anything in my life, with the possible exception of the day I adopted Basil. After washing the dishes, I lay them out on a medium sized blue Sham Wow and again, I don’t know where the water goes, but minutes later I put the clean dishes away and the towel is as dry and ready for the next project as it was when it hit the counter. For whatever reason, this is fascinating to me.

Lest I get booted form the White Elephant luncheon for arriving gift-less this year, I rectified the gift problem finally and completely over the weekend and had to go no farther than a Barnes and Noble’s entry foyer to do it. There, displayed in nice even piles, were ‘Humorous Holiday Kits – The Perfect Gift!’s. Reluctantly bypassing the foam fruitcake (‘The Perfect Re-Gift! Includes copy of 50 Uses For A Fruitcake’) I selected ‘The Zen Dog”, a box including a plastic curry comb, CD of soothing meditation music, instructional booklet on dog massage, instructional booklet of dog meditations to read to your pet while you play the accompanying DVD of relaxing images for your dog, and also “The Complete Kazooist”, which included a CD of favorite Kazoo songs, DVD of proper Kazoo handling techniques, and of course, a silver plated Kazoo. Once home, I wrapped them both, firmly taping the Kazoo kit on top of the Zen Dog box. In retrospect I think I’ve spent too much time in the “As Seen On TV” aisle lately because instead of a label I applied stick on letters to both boxes. On the Zen Dog, the letters spelled out “Best Gift Ever!” and on the Kazoo kit, “But Wait, There’s More!”. I put both in a bag, and considered my White Elephant Drama over.

And it is over, but only because I took the bag to my office the very next morning, deciding to store it on my credenza rather than in my eye line at home. I did this for no other reason than that Basil seems a bit stressed lately and I can’t afford to consider the possibility that she might enjoy a plastic curry comb, DVD of relaxing images or CD of soothing meditation music. If there’s one thing I don’t need for Christmas, it’s yet another White Elephant from myself.