Last night during a good ol’ late night Target shopping spree, I was going through my head picking out my attire for the day to follow as I usually do. People think I’m deep in thought sometimes and yeah, I am, but it’s usually unimportant shit like that. Regardless, I was proud to be defying Oprah’s hypothesis that men aren’t multitaskers. What the fuck you call shopping for a Dustbusta, walking, sipping on some water and thinking about what I’m gonna wear to work tomorrow, HUH OPRAH? Who’s the big shot now?
As I was going though the different shirt and jean options in my head, it occurred to me that it was time to do laundry. Every article of clothing I could think of was presently residing in the hamper beneath a wet towel from my shower that morning. All that remained for me to wear on my lower half were a) a pair of flood-cut Levis and b) a pair of black heavy metal jeans. Mmmmyeah, thanks, but no thanks.
So I got home around 10 and lugged my 2 loads of laundry down and figured heck, might as well throw my 1 set of bedsheets I own in there as well, they’re about due. 10 quarters and 2 capfuls of detergent later, I was on my way to living a life full of clean, fresh, neatly folded bodily furnishings.
30 minutes passed and I went down to switch to the dryers. One of my neighbors was on her way out of the laundry room:
“Hey Micycle – is that your laundry in there?” said she.
“Yes it tis,” I kindly replied.
“Well, I just wanted to tell you that I think both machines are broken and no one put a note on them.”
I thanked her for the heads up, we bid each other a good night, and into the laundry room I went.
Upon entry, I was greeted by the faint smell of something resembling burning engine belts in a car. The time display on both mat-cheens read “2” and they were shaking and smoking something fierce. I waited the storm out for a few minutes, but nothing really changed.
I lifted the lid to each mat-cheen only to discover that they each stopped doing what they were made to do somewhere around the “filled up with soapy water” cycle of the wash. How it was that 2 separate mat-cheens simultaneously broke down like that is beyond me, but they sure did.
There’s no way this stuff was remotely dryer-ready, so I took ‘em all out, sopping wet, getting soapy water all over the damned place, and lugged that shit back outside and to my building, up 3 flights of stairs, leaving a nice trail of soapy water all along the way. My Vans were hella soaked and making a weird squishy noise as I walked. I felt a strange effervescent sensation between my toes. And let me tell you something: if you think a lot of laundry is heavy when it’s dry, just you try carrying it when it’s wet. I felt like a dang mule hauling that stuff up there. Props to the mules and other farm animals; hauling shit is hard.
I learned that Laundromats are not open at 10:45pm, and this saddened me. So today I chose the flood-cut Levis (my, how apropos). They’re a might bit too short around the ankles and make me feel like I have hula hoops swishing around them when I walk. And it’s gonna be that way until I hit the Laundromat tonight after work to spend prolly $20 restoring my clothes to how they’re s’posed to be.
To my specs-wearing accomplice for the evening: there will be no better time for ale, greazy foods, and malts, I reckon. Bring that shit ON!
