Dirty Laundry
When I went to college, my sister got me a laundry bag. It's a black military-style stuff bag. She wrote my name in gold fabric paint and ironed on an image of unicorn (rampant). I don't think either of us pictured me still using it almost 20 years later. Every week, I fill up the bag, assemble the rest of my supplies, and drive 5 miles to the nearest Laundromat. It's not all bad- however much you have, you're done in an hour. Fortunately for my fragile dignity, the unicorn has mostly peeled off.
Nobody else I know uses the Laundromat. People are generally horrified that I have no laundry facilities at home; they just can't imagine surviving without them. Having a washer and dryer has become a sort of litmus test of class and prosperity. In the movies, hip young singles meet over the swirling lingerie in a sudsy haze of meet-cute. Maybe that happens in big city, but in my reality, the other folks marking time with me through wash, rinse, and final spin are the homeless, drug addicts, migrant laborers, and other folks that clearly can't afford a place nice enough to have laundry. I don't exactly fit (and I have a very nice place, it just doesn't have hook-ups).
Given this population, I have some pretty interesting laundry adventures. Small children tend to get bored and look for a playmate. I recently met a "nuclear physicist" who had spent 20 years trying to figure out how to make the universe shift gears. The young man who cleans the place will sometimes stop to chat about life. Nobody has ever stolen from me or been discourteous. I will say I was glad when the drug addict who kept asking for my number got arrested for driving drunk and trying to ram a police car.
And yet I am a member of the tribe of regulars. Most weeks there is at least one individual taking a safari to Laundromat-land with a comforter to wash in the high capacity machines, or whose washer broke. Or they might be tourists to the coast, driving RV's that cost more than a house. They toddle in, looking all sleek and shiny and confused. Laundry dilettantes. I must look pretty innocuous, with my book or my knitting, because they often approach me to learn the ways of coin-operated cleanliness. And it feels weird, because once again I am between classes- a person with a great deal of education and a professional job, hanging out in a place I don't belong.
And yet, I know which dryer doesn't heat properly and which washers are full of sand, and know not to put my bag on the floor lest roaches hitch a ride home, so I do belong. I have all kinds of survival knowledge that most of the professionals I encounter do not have, a different understanding of my world. It remains to be seen whether having a foot in two worlds turns out to be an advantage.
Nobody else I know uses the Laundromat. People are generally horrified that I have no laundry facilities at home; they just can't imagine surviving without them. Having a washer and dryer has become a sort of litmus test of class and prosperity. In the movies, hip young singles meet over the swirling lingerie in a sudsy haze of meet-cute. Maybe that happens in big city, but in my reality, the other folks marking time with me through wash, rinse, and final spin are the homeless, drug addicts, migrant laborers, and other folks that clearly can't afford a place nice enough to have laundry. I don't exactly fit (and I have a very nice place, it just doesn't have hook-ups).
Given this population, I have some pretty interesting laundry adventures. Small children tend to get bored and look for a playmate. I recently met a "nuclear physicist" who had spent 20 years trying to figure out how to make the universe shift gears. The young man who cleans the place will sometimes stop to chat about life. Nobody has ever stolen from me or been discourteous. I will say I was glad when the drug addict who kept asking for my number got arrested for driving drunk and trying to ram a police car.
And yet I am a member of the tribe of regulars. Most weeks there is at least one individual taking a safari to Laundromat-land with a comforter to wash in the high capacity machines, or whose washer broke. Or they might be tourists to the coast, driving RV's that cost more than a house. They toddle in, looking all sleek and shiny and confused. Laundry dilettantes. I must look pretty innocuous, with my book or my knitting, because they often approach me to learn the ways of coin-operated cleanliness. And it feels weird, because once again I am between classes- a person with a great deal of education and a professional job, hanging out in a place I don't belong.
And yet, I know which dryer doesn't heat properly and which washers are full of sand, and know not to put my bag on the floor lest roaches hitch a ride home, so I do belong. I have all kinds of survival knowledge that most of the professionals I encounter do not have, a different understanding of my world. It remains to be seen whether having a foot in two worlds turns out to be an advantage.