Earlier this week, the Wall Street Journal did a trend piece about former retail clerks who learned to fold clothes working at the Gap, and never gave it up. An old friend emailed me the URL, noting “This totally reminded me of your old Learning To Fold post.”

I laughed. Ha ha. It was totally similar.

Evidently my friend wasn’t the only one to have noticed the similarity, and on Wednesday, when I stepped off my flight to Boston, I had an email waiting on my phone from a journalist in the UK who was writing a related piece:

i was hunting about the internet for other mentions of this and chanced on your 2004 blog about the Disney Fold. So, I was wondering if you’d mind if I quoted that in my piece, or better still and you have the time, you’d be able to give me a quick quote? Afraid I’m on a crazy-early london deadline (ie I have to file in about an hour) but if you do get this and can drop me a line about ingrained folding techniques, that would be fantastic.

I’d missed her 60 minute deadline, and within another hour I got a Google alert informing me that my name had been mentioned in an article in the Daily Telegraph:

Ariel Meadow Stallings, of Seattle, said she cannot shake her habit picked while working at Disney World 10 years ago.

Granted, she got the story wrong: I worked for Disney almost 15 years ago, and it was the Disney Store, not Disney World. But whatever: who cares.

The next morning, I got a phone call from New York. Convinced it was yet another escort caller (I still get several late-night calls a week from horny men), I let the call go to voicemail.

It wasn’t a horny man: it was a producer calling from ABC, wanting to interview me for Good Morning America. To talk about what, you might ask? My book? The Salon of Shame? 52 Nights? No: to talk to me about folding fucking tshirts.

I called the producer back because I almost couldn’t believe it. She let me know that she was working on a trend piece for Monday, and that she was looking for someone with an impeccably organized closet that looked like a shelf at The Gap.

Now, we all know I’m a media whore. I bill myself as a commentator. As an author, it’s smart business. But the prospect of spending several hours this weekend with a film crew in my house, showing off my closet, talking about HOW I FOLD MY FUCKING TSHIRTS!? Well, it was too much even for a whore like me.

I explained that I was out of town (Boston) not getting in until late Friday, and then leaving town again Monday (LA). I explained that, well, if they wanted to talk to me about say my book, I’d definitely take the time. But that honestly? Really? I just didn’t want to spend half a day being filmed as the freak who Disney-folds her tshirts. The producer was very understanding and thanked me for my time.

The last time a film crew was in my house (the local stringers for ABC World News were the same guys as filmed my bit for the Today Show), the cameraman was like “Dude, once you’re in the rolodex, they’ll just keep calling.” I thought that was a good thing, like Yay! Maybe once the 52 Nights Unplugged media storm has passed, someone will want to talk to me about Offbeat Bride!

Instead, they wanted to talk to me about tshirt folding. Mainstream media continues to baffle me.