Maybe a sock has hired it to go undercover to try and track down a missing mate.
Maybe a jealous hand towel has had it rubbed out because it didn’t understand why it never gets dirty.
Maybe it’s clinging to a sheet or large towel.

Did you check the veg compartment of your fridge?

- Look and feel inside the washer, just in case the towel is wadded and sticking near the top, where you can’t easily see it.

- If you’ve recently laundered some bedlinens, the towel might be caught inside a pillowcase or the corner of a fitted sheet.

- The towel might also be stuck to a larger bath towel.

Have you ever seen “A Matter of Minutes,” from the 1980s reboot of “Twilight Zone?” A couple learns that every minute of time occurs in a different location, with workers carefully crafting each scene. Sometimes, the workers forget to include the scissors, the remote control, or other items that inexplicably go missing. Maybe that’s what happened to your towel; after you’d started your laundry, the guys left it behind.

Alternatively, an errant sock might have kidnapped the towel, because it’s lonesome and needs company. A kneesock, perhaps?

Stuck in washing machine drum.

I cannot tell a lie. It knocked on my door last night asking for sanctuary and I took it in.

I saw it washed up on the beach with other flotsam and jetsam. It looked forlorn.

Ok, it’s time for me to tell the truth. I stole your pepper towel. Unlike you, I don’t think it’s ugly; I think it’s cute. The towel deserves a better home, where it’ll be appreciated for all its adorable quirkiness.

If you’d like to keep in touch, here’s the towel’s email address: kneesoxhatesme@gmail.com.

Did you check between the couch cushions?

Oh where oh where can my pepper towel be, oh where oh where can it be?

Under the washer / dryer. You probably dropped it somewhere. Solid objects can’t just dematerialize. Unless you hurt it’s feelings and it ran away. Poor towel. It weren’t a bad old towel, it weren’t.

Look under the above the ground pool next to the frizzer.

^^ Or maybe it was used to make pancakes?

Oh, my, the possibilities. Damn, I think @Tropical_Willie is onto something. If you’re right, Willie, you win a cake.

I have to assure you, though, that I did not mistreat the pepper towel. I suppose it could have sensed that it was not loved, but I always tried to treat it kindly.

• I did check the other linens in that laundry load and didn’t find anything clinging.
• I always check the freezer, especially when my glasses go missing, but not usually the veg bin….Nope, not there.
• Not wadded in the washer; I checked that first. No access to any space outside the drum.
• Noplace for it to get caught in the dryer.

I’m actually doubting that it even made it to the washer; I’m pretty sure I don’t remember transferring it to the dryer.

The pathetic runaway stories, though: I was not mean to my pepper towel. It might have been rebellious, but it was never abused. Hmph.

• Couch cushions. On my way….Ok, good thought, but no. Not even cookie crumbs or a dime.
• There’s no space under the washer, and only a sliver of space beneath the dryer. Can’t reach or see. Maybe it’ll be found there when I’ve passed on.
• Pancakes: possible, but too elusively soon to tell.

I do have to refute the sock theory. The truth about the socks, not commonly known, is this: that odd sock that appears in your laundry is not evidence that one is missing. It’s an extra sock, a rogue sock that has come in from elsewhere in the universe, solo, and it never has had a mate. You won’t see another like it until you’ve thrown this one away, and they never would have been a pair. They’re all single free agents.

The only other unexplored possibility I can think of is that the bleach bleached the red peppers right off it and so it’s hiding in plain sight. However, I don’t know why that would suddenly happen after so many unremarkable passages through the process.

How nice for it that it has so many vigilant friends in the world. If you’re in contact, please say I’m asking for it to come home.

Perhaps it was consumed by a predatory bath towel, or a bed sheet that likes spicy fabrics?! ;-p

Nah, I just talked to it. It’s an empty shadow of the towel is once was. Looking for a new home, where artsy towels are used and appreciated. It refuses to go home. The damage is irrevocable.

Could be the beginning of dementia

Has it got mixed up with the trash? Anyhow it seems a clear case of neglect and it may have gone to seek legal advice. There could be difficulties for you here. You yourself are on record as saying, and I quote “I don’t like the towel” and you think it is “ugly”. You also admit to folding it up pepper side in and using it for menial duties which is an affront to its dignity. When you do a bleach laundry you say you “often toss it in”. All this together amounts to damning evidence of abuse.

It does not look good for you should the case come to court. The forlorn and pathetic appearance of your unloved red pepper towel in the witness stand is sure to engage the sympathies of the jury and you can expect the harshest sentencing. I would go and discuss matters with your lawyer immediately.

We find socks in the sleeves of my long sleeve shirts, we have a front load washer and the rim on the front has had more than one sock stuck to it and laastly dropped it on the floor on the way to the washer (find it when going back to fold clothes in bedroom).

@rebbel Sounds like Stockhom Syndrome to me!

Pepper towels, and toilet pepper too, btw, will usually dissolve into nothing when washed. Mystery solved.

Garbage can, maybe someone threw it out?

@omtatsat Could be the beginning of dementia

Would that be @kneesox‘s dementia, or the towel’s dementia? I ask because dementia patients have been known to wander off.

Maybe in the frizzer?

I think I saw a “Pepper Alert” on the New York state thruway. Here is the vehicle .

Found! Found, found, found. Hurray!

So my prodigal towel slunk home with a droopy head and apologized for sneaking out. It wanted some Halloween fun. Left in a big yellow taxi, in fact. Came home the same night, but I didn’t know because it was in disguise!

I went to the linen closet to get one of the standard plain all-white dishtowels just to use for the time being, while continuing to search in all the places and ways you clever jellies suggested. And when I unfolded it on the counter—peppers! Folded inside.

That’s when I remembered that my son had helped me fold the laundry, and he must have just given it the standard fold without even noticing the pepper design on one end, and I didn’t see it go by. It made so little an impression on him that he later said he’d never seen it ever in his life. So it was just by chance that that’s the one I picked out of the linen closet as its replacement.

And now I’ve folded it into my arms and welcomed it home, and it’s back where it’s supposed to be.

Thanks to all you armchair detectives and cheerleaders. And for the other guys, I’ll have you know I have never mistreated a towel except when I had to take the cat to the vet in a carrying box. I give them long and useful lives and then I gently retire them when the time comes.

And now my faith in the properties of solid objects is restored, and my bathroom is put right again.

And it’s still ugly, my pepper towel, but ugly things have their place in this world, don’t you agree? That doesn’t mean they can’t be loved, even if we don’t like them.

I feel the same way about potted poinsettias and that one stupid lamp.

@kneesox

“I went to the linen closet to get one of the standard plain all-white dishtowels just to use for the time being, while continuing to search in all the places and ways you clever jellies suggested. And when I unfolded it on the counter—peppers! Folded inside.”

Ah ha! Just as I suspected- it was consumed by a predatory, spicy-fabric-loving dishtowel! ;-o

I am sadded that my email to KneesoxHatesMe@gmail.com bounced back.

Yes, sadded is totally a real word.

Call it a senior moment and forget about it. : )

It is in my bed.