A few days ago, the long-eared, crazy dog decided to spit up on my comforter. This morning, I FINALLY made it to the laudromat…which has given me some fuel for a post. Here we go…..
I find LaundrOmats interesting and useful. Our first apartment was about the size of our current living room. Needless to say, a laundry room wasn’t included in the floor plan. The apartment complex had a small washeteria, so I would traipse my little, 18 year old self down there about once a week to take care of the dirty clothes. This little “private” laundromat only gave me a suggestion of how REAL laundromats worked. Yes, there were kids, there were annoying men, there was always a machine out of order…. but then, we moved several times. With those re-locations came the, um…. “opportunities” to venture out into the real world and burn lots of gas trying to find the least creepy, safest appearing laundromat.
Following are a few things that are common among all laundromats:
1. If you need a heavy duty machine and there are 5 heavy duty machines at your first choice of laundromat, 4 of them will be out of order and one will have clothes in it. So, just turn around and take that 150-pounds of laundry BACK to your car and find another place.
2. It doesn’t matter if it’s 120-degrees or -20-degrees, there will be a fly hanging out in the laundromat who will become interested in me, and ONLY me…and My nose in particular. Nothing makes me look more like a Psychotic, laundromat-creeping-weirdo than my flailing arms and face slapping maneuvers trying to kill that nostril seeking fly that hasn’t seemed to bother anyone else in the place.
3. There is most always an unsupervised, snot-nosed toddler who prefers his own boogers over that bag of skittles or cheetos in his other hand – at least the kid either has sweet/salty or soft/cheesy snacks. On the up side, I am almost always hungry when I go to the laundromat. These toddlers most likely squash the desire to raid my quarter stash to feed myself from the vending machines.
4. Speaking of kids, I can usually count on there being an older youngster, say 5-8 years of age who will just be sitting in a chair staring at me. I smile, but the child just has a blank stare…at me…. all that goes through my mind is a froggy voice saying, “REDRUM, REDRUM.”
5. You can bet your bottom dollar that if I’ve managed to get to a laundromat where I am alone, there will be a creepy guy, with no laundry, who will come in to look at magazines or a newspaper. AND you can dig around and find some change to place a bet on this – no one, I mean no one on my contact list will answer his/her phone… that is, if I even have my cell phone in my pocket. Back in the early laundromat days, there were no cellphones and the only pay phone was invariably right next to the chair that creepy guy would sit in!
As I said, LaundrOmats are interesting. The thing I love most about laundromats is the fact that you can put all your clothes on to wash at the same time, put them all in dryers…and then you’re done. Having said that, this morning I just took my comforter to the laundromat… now, I’ve got laundry to do – UGH!
the Dirty Gnome gardens 