Dirty Laundry

Back when you were a kid, you probably always complained about various chores to do…picking up the dog poop, cleaning your room, picking up the dog poop in your room, cleaning your pet rat’s cage, washing your dad’s nice sports car with a toothbrush and dial soap even though it’s negative 15 degrees out, you know…typical childhood stuff.

But then…when you’re OLDER and ON YOUR OWN, whatever the hell THAT means, you are supposed to welcome these chores. Like…okay, I’m on my own now…these things have to be done, so I am going to do it. Because I am responsible, and it is not responsible to let that dead cat just fester in my living room. I should pick it up.

Other things you are expected to do as an adult: Change your own clothes, be potty-trained, speak articulate sentences (as in…pronounce your R’s and don’t refer to your parents as mommy and daddy,) and worst of all…DO YOUR OWN LAUNDRY.

Don’t stop reading yet. Are you reading? You’re reading!!?!? Thanks. Okay. But seriously…laundry is the notorious chore that everyone hates, and if you know someone that says things like, “But…I LOVE LAUNDRY!” You should find that person and hurt them severely, or immediately inspect them to reveal their identity as a washing machine, not a person. In which case, you are weird because you make friends with robots.

The laundry room in my apartment complex is approximately a 40 foot walk from my apartment, but that can often feel like a 40,000 foot walk if you do it in severe wind, wearing a t-shirt and flip flops. So, to speed up the walk today, I decided to run.

So, there I was, carrying my large teal basket of laundry, sauntering down to the laundry room when I spot several kids playing on the jungle-gym on the way to the laundry room. I stop, feeling slightly embarrassed, mostly because the kids are laughing loudly and pointing fingers at me. I realize I look funny when I run, but I didn’t realize that 5 year olds believe so too.

I continued to walk shamefully with my head down, when I feel a slight poke on my left hip.

“Mister,” says the small child who is one of those kids that has an adult face on a toddler-body. I almost did a double-take to see if he was a cast member from “little people big world,” but he wasn’t. He was just a creepy little kid poking my hip while I ran to do my laundry.

“Oh, hey. How are you doing?” I say, because I can’t think of anything else to say, like “Don’t touch me, you creepy little midget child.”

“Why are you running?” his gigantic head says to me.

“Because it is really cold outside. I don’t have a jacket on like you do.” I say.
“Well…where are you running to?”

“The laundry room,” You little creep. Why are you asking me so many questions?
“I’ll run there too! It’s warm there!”

To the kid’s credit, it is warm there. It is really warm there. A lot warmer than outside.

So he and his little children of the corn friends follow me to the laundry room as I continue my apparently hilarious jog to get out of the god awful weather.

I proceed to do my laundry, while they punch against the vending machine, stare at me in a highly terrifying fashion, fog up the window pane and draw designs on it, and ask me the occasional question like, “Where did you get all the quarters from?”

Your mother.

I didn’t say that. That would be terrible. I told them the tooth fairy gave them to me…because I eat lots of candy and never brush my teeth so they fall out! If you guys do the same…you can do overpriced coin-operated laundry too!

Then I hear a tiny voice say, “I put my tooth under my pillow one time, and I woke up and there was chap-stick under it instead.”

I felt sort of bad, but I figured these little tykes knew I was just kidding. Cavities are bad.

I went back to the laundry room an hour or so later, to find no vacant driers, but one load was done drying, so I took the liberty of emptying it into a basket and putting my clothes into the dryer.

Then I hear another tiny, more-midgety voice say, “Are those your clothes?”

“No…they aren’t. But I need to use a dryer.”

“Well, what if that person wants their clothes to stay in there?”

“Um…if they really wanted them…they would have come to get their clothes by now. Besides, I’m putting them in this basket they can get them from there when they want to.”

“Those are my daddy’s clothes!” The little midgetman says.

“Really? Well…I’m sorry but you can go tell your daddy his clothes are done, but I’m going to use this dryer.”

“It’s not really my daddy’s clothes. My daddy doesn’t live here. He lives in jail.”

There was a few seconds of silence, then the far door opened and one of his little friends comes storming through the backdoor, looks up at me and says…

“You RUN FUNNY!”

I wanted to speak, but I couldn’t think of any words to say as I felt humiliated, embarrassed and really terrible for the little kid all in one. Instead, I just put my laundry in the dryer and walked away.

I came back about an hour later…30 minutes after the drying was done to find my clothes carelessly sprawled across the floor, and my dryer being used. I have no idea who was behind this, but I can only imagine it was those pesky kids, or maybe a really bitter adult who was upset that I moved their laundry. Into a basket. Not the floor.

Anyway, this simply proves that nobody likes laundry, and everyone hates the tooth fairy. I’m going to wash my clothes in the sink from now on.