Sunday, January 15, 2006
Classier and Classier
So yesterday I finally reached the point where I could no longer deny that I was out of clean underwear, and decided I should do a little laundry. I made my way down the treacherous Back Staircase of Doom (it's seriously at like a 45 degree angle from the building), past the Mean Girls with the Illegal Dog, and over to the Suddenly Coin-Operated Laundry Room, only to discover that it was locked. This was a problem for several reasons. First of all, it has never in the history of time been locked, and no one in our building has a key, although I have four keys that apparently go to nothing at all. Secondly, Liz had a load of laundry trapped in there, and while that's not necessarily on the scale of a baby down a well, it is just a little bit tragic. And finally, as I may have mentioned before, our building maintenance crew is essentially composed of dropouts from the English for Cabdrivers program, making it unlikely that any series of fragmentarily-shouted phone calls would yield any actual help on this issue.
So I decided to drive to the laundromat.
It's hard to decide what aspect of this particular trip was the most horrifying. It may have been the part when I dropped the laundry basket as I pulled it out of the trunk, scattering my soiled whites across the strip mall parking lot, including a sock that landed directly in the entryway of a Quiznos. It might have come when the laundromat attendant (which is now apparently a profession) chastised me for "using too much detergent." But if I had to pick, I guess I would choose the ten minute exchange about fabric softener I was nonconsentually involved in with the World's Oldest Woman who chose to rinse her dainties next to me. That provided enough horrifying imagery to haunt my dreams for a lifetime.
I think from now on, when my clothes get dirty, I will just replace them.
So yesterday I finally reached the point where I could no longer deny that I was out of clean underwear, and decided I should do a little laundry. I made my way down the treacherous Back Staircase of Doom (it's seriously at like a 45 degree angle from the building), past the Mean Girls with the Illegal Dog, and over to the Suddenly Coin-Operated Laundry Room, only to discover that it was locked. This was a problem for several reasons. First of all, it has never in the history of time been locked, and no one in our building has a key, although I have four keys that apparently go to nothing at all. Secondly, Liz had a load of laundry trapped in there, and while that's not necessarily on the scale of a baby down a well, it is just a little bit tragic. And finally, as I may have mentioned before, our building maintenance crew is essentially composed of dropouts from the English for Cabdrivers program, making it unlikely that any series of fragmentarily-shouted phone calls would yield any actual help on this issue.
So I decided to drive to the laundromat.
It's hard to decide what aspect of this particular trip was the most horrifying. It may have been the part when I dropped the laundry basket as I pulled it out of the trunk, scattering my soiled whites across the strip mall parking lot, including a sock that landed directly in the entryway of a Quiznos. It might have come when the laundromat attendant (which is now apparently a profession) chastised me for "using too much detergent." But if I had to pick, I guess I would choose the ten minute exchange about fabric softener I was nonconsentually involved in with the World's Oldest Woman who chose to rinse her dainties next to me. That provided enough horrifying imagery to haunt my dreams for a lifetime.
I think from now on, when my clothes get dirty, I will just replace them.
