Cheery Monologues
By Sean Wilkinson
I never have liked doing laundry. I cannot look back and say, “I remember this one time that I was doing laundry… it was GREAT!”
This isn’t revolutionary. I know no one likes doing laundry, but with my extremely low tolerance for stupidity and my incredibly low level of patience for strangers, I feel I’m especially at risk of developing laundrophobia. (I am determined to have at least one fake word per column).
I still do not have the luxury of laundry machines in my apartment, so I have to go to laundromats. This means I am forced to take on a task I loathe, in a place full of people I would really rather not ever interact with, never mind spend two hours among, under green fluorescent light, with the overlapping sounds of three blaring TVs tuned to shows stupid people watch. You’ve never heard Dr. Phil until you’ve heard him competing with Judge Judy and Texas Justice. After an hour of listening to that last Saturday, I found myself shopping around in Uncle Henry’s for a mobile home. I had circled ads for three double-wides before I snapped out of it.
I don’t know why I thought Saturday would be a good night to experience the wonder of my local scumbag laundromat. After stuffing a double-load machine full of the cushion covers, pumping in 12 quarters, dumping a fifty-cent cup of detergent in the appropriate hole, and pushing the “START” button about 86 times, I turned to the lovely and helpful attendant standing directly next to me and asked her why the machine wouldn’t start.
“Oh, I dunno … But I know you ain’t lyin’, cuz it wouldn’t staht for me 15 minutes ago. I guess I fergot tah put an OUT OF ORDAH sign on it.”
Then perhaps, you lovely, attractive, helpful, brilliant woman who works at the laundromat, you should have said something to me while I was wrestling with the machine. Anytime in the past 15 minutes would have been great, but especially before I inserted all 12 quarters or before I dumped gooey detergent all over the cat-hair-and-dog-puke encrusted cushion covers we got with our new thrift-store couch.
The attendant was kind enough to let me transfer everything to another machine myself, and she gave me twelve quarters and more soap. This time, as I started the machine, water poured out of the door. Poured. Like Niagara Falls poured. I held the door shut, stopping the flow, and asked the wonderful, not at all disgusting attendant what I should do with this machine that had just been gushing water across the floor.
“Oh Jeezis. Yah musta not closed the doah all da way.”
“Yes I did.”
She then proceeded to check for herself. She let the door go and watched water cascade over her stylish and not at all hilariously trashy shoes. Then she quickly slammed the door shut again. And then let it go again. After about six slams of the door and six floodings of water and soap, she concluded that there was in fact something wrong with the machine. (At least her feet will be clean, I thought — not that I would ever think they would be encrusted with toe jam or a veneer of pungent foot cheese.)
Her first solution was to apply a piece of masking tape to the door. Now, I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to apply a piece of masking tape to a wet surface, never mind a soapy wet surface, but it’s going to be about as effective as a magnet on a tree. Needless to say, the water was not held back by the three-inch piece of masking tape. Her next solution was pure brilliance, not at all displaying a complete lack of tact or intelligence. Not at all a wonderful display of pure clueless dirtbaghood.
“I guess you’s gonna haf ta hold it closed while it’s fillin’.”
“Are you serious?”
“Ayuh.”
So I did, glaring and grumbling under my breath, but knowing that there was no good way to combat her pervasive ignorance. I held the door closed for the remainder of the 35-minute cycle. I listened to the sparkling conversation between the ever so helpful and not at all repulsive attendant and a pleasant young man from Bulgaria. I dried the covers, folded them up, and left, with yet another pleasant laundromat experience under my belt.
On the way home, I realized: She never did put an “OUT OF ORDAH” sign on the fucking machine.
