I have heard the only things you can’t avoid are death and taxes. I’d like to amend that and add laundry. Since the beginning of recorded history, before the invention of taxes, our ancestors were down by the river beating dirt out of the old loincloths, with the stain stick of that era, rocks and gravel. Things have come a long way since then, but as every laundry goddess can attest, strange and eerie happenings occur in the old washroom.
I usually love my washing machine, but it is a little on the nervous side. All clothes must be perfectly divided around the agitator, or there will be hell to pay. If the balance is not perfect that machine shimmies and shakes like a belly dancer on steroids. A friend of mine tossed on a load of wash before she went out. Her washer, like mine, has no tolerance for inequality of clothes distribution. When she returned home, she found her washer had actually conga’d right out of the laundry room, into the hallway. During its migration, it took out the door frame, and left more than a few gouges in the drywall. Lucky for her, the water hoses didn’t yank out. You just haven’t lived till the pressurized hot water hose breaks free and goes on the attack. Think Marlin Perkins on wild kingdom, wrestling with an anaconda!
I have discovered my washer does not take kindly to being overstuffed either. It waits until the tub fills with soapy water; is out of warranty, and then refuses to spin. This entails the removal of saturated towels that weigh 10 times normal, bailing out the tub, and calling my repair guy. (Who by the way, does not resemble the Maytag repair man, and is always very, very busy.) After considerable money changes hands, I get to complete the wash portion of the laundry show and its’ off to the dryer.
My dryer must be appeased on a weekly basis, by sacrifices. Thankfully it doesn’t require virgins tossed into live volcanos, but it does need to devour 2 or 3 socks per week. I don’t know what it does with these offerings, but occasionally it spits them back. I keep a mesh sack next to my dryer that I have dubbed the “sock orphanage.” When I come up with an odd sock, a very frequent event, I check to see if its mate is in the bag. If so, I can reunite the happy couple. If not, I know the dryer has snatched another piece of hosiery for its mysterious purposes. An old neighbor actually saw a sock blow out of her dryer vent, as she sat in her backyard. It was a sock that had gone missing months before. Now that’s just plain spooky! This appliance has been known to facilitate escapes for other pieces of clothing. My friend related this horrifying story. She was at the Mall with her husband, when another shopper stopped to tell them she noticed some sort of rag emerging from her husband’s jean leg. It turns out it was a pair of her “granny” underpants, that had stowed away in her partners jeans during the dryer cycle. She is sure that said underwear were tired of living stretched across her big ole behind, and tried to make a break for the border.
The final step in the cycle is emptying and folding the dryer’s contents. My son’s have a mental block when it comes to emptying pockets, so when folding time rolls around I live by that adage “finders keepers, losers, weepers.” I have found a multitude of odds and ends tossed free during the dryer cycle. This has included, but is not limited to cell phones, retainers, game cartridges, pencils, and even a sand crab or two during the summer. I have been known to turn into a “weeper” when the offering is crayons, pens, candy, or chap sticks. This means you must start the whole process over from the beginning! It is like landing on the “Go Directly to Jail” spot in Monopoly. On a bright note, I have funded my retirement account quite generously with the assortment of coin, and folding cash that ends up in my lint trap. I can’t help thinking that the dryer cycle is just like a box of chocolates, you never know what you’re going to get.
Well on that note I hear my dryer signaling the end of yet another cycle, so let the folding begin!
