The Idiot’s Guide to Vanishing

Start when someone asks you to fold a fitted sheet.

You try.

You wrestle it like a sweaty octopus.

Then you give up and say a word

that gets you banned from the church newsletter.

That’s step one.

That’s how men begin to vanish.

Step two: Tell your spouse you’re “running to the store.”

They’ll say, “For what?”

You say, “Sanity.”

Then walk out the door carrying nothing but car keys

and a piece of beef jerky in your shirt pocket.

Step three: Drive nowhere.

Sit in the parking lot of a Michael’s

because no one will think to look there.

You’re in deep cover, between the Mod Podge and fake moss.

Turn off your phone.

Post one cryptic status:

“I’ve gone where socks go in the hamper.”

Let them figure it out.

Step four: Change your name.

Pick something that doesn’t give you away.

Carl. Hank. “Coach.”

Tell people you once sold propane in Tennessee.

If memory comes knockin’,

act confused.

Say, “I don’t know them,”

like Mariah Carey but with back pain.

If guilt shows up?

Offer it a boiled peanut and keep walking.

Step five: Leave behind a trail

of mildly upsetting clues:

your belt on the mailbox

your left shoe in the freezer

a single sticky note on the fridge that reads

“no more casserole. I mean it.”

Now

and this is key

don’t leave angry.

Leave full.

Full of gas station snacks, full of mystery,

and full of the joy of a man

who no longer pretends to know

what a duvet cover is.

Congratulations.

You’ve disappeared.

Not in a blaze of glory.

Not in a midlife crisis Corvette.

You just

stopped folding.

Stopped explaining.

Stopped being “available for a quick favor.”

And if someday they call you back

to fix the Wi-Fi,

kill a spider,

or God forbid

fold another fitted sheet...

Just remember:

You are legend now.

And legends don’t fold fitted sheets.