September 30, 2006

Fun Piled on a Bun

(Don't feed me no bologna.)

It will be a great day when I have my own washer and dryer. At present, it is far off in the unforseeable future. I don't like it one bit.

I've had it with laundromats all these years. What with the constant quest for laundry quarters, the not finding out a washer isn't working until it's too late and you have to transfer your sticky, detergent-dripping clothes to another machine while lamenting the loss of the aforementioned precious quarters; the suspicious inspection of the machines for crayons, tissues, and leaky, inky pens that have been washed; the kids running through the joint screaming and crashing the metal carts into everything and everyone; the change machines that only like dollar bills that are at a medium stage of wear and tear; and, my personal favorite, not finding out your dryer didn't work until the cycle ends....it's enough to drive you to drink.

Tonight I decided it would be fun to spend my Saturday night at the laundromat. I managed to have some strange muscle spasm in my arm while carefully pouring bleach (why or why did I stop buying the "no splash" kind?) and poured it all over the machine and myself. (I am completely disinfected, now.)

True enough, I've had very colorful experiences in laundromats. There was the dingy little laundromat in the Bolton Hill neighborhood of Baltimore where the elderly Black ladies gathered around giggling and whispering as the male stripper hung up his delicates. There was the time in Richmond that I was so aggravated with the Jehovah's Witnesses that would come in and harass me with their little magazines while I sat on the table reading; the only way I could get them to stop trying to talk to me about God was to tell them I worshipped the devil. (I like to think my soul was prayed for that night.) Ahh...good times...

Gotta head back over--the dryers should be done in two minutes, Allah willing.

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