Monday, February 16, 2004

Where do you wash your clothes, gentle reader? I ask because I’m convinced that laundry rooms are veritable foundries of awkward interpersonal moments. The worst rooms are the mid-sized ones, which lack the comfort of your own home and the mildewed anonymity of laundromats. I’m talking about the ones with four washers, four dryers, and two minutes of strained “conversation,” the kind that makes you want to pour Snuggle in your eyes.

So I decide to do my laundry on Friday night, thinking that everyone else in my apartment complex has functional night lives. Wrong. I spy a grand total of one vacant washer and make a beeline for it. While I’m shoveling clothes into the machine, a woman walks in and proceeds to empty out a dryer for her own clothes. I greet her and fall silent.

“I usually don’t like to do this,” she shrugged, “but this pile smells like it’s been here for a while.”

Zing! I guess that absolves you of all guilt, I thought. What came out of my mouth, however, was a cross between a chuckle and a sigh. This apparently was enough encouragement for her to go on.

“I thought it wouldn’t be busy, y’know?” she continued. “But I guess people are doing their laundry so they’ll have something to wear when they go out for Valentine’s.”

Unbeknownst to her, I was doing laundry for the love of the craft. The interpersonally chivalrous thing to do would’ve been to expound on the state of the laundry room and swap witty banter about our Valentine’s Day plans. (“Oh, I plan on spending Valentine’s Day riding my sweet, sweet honey, which is to say my car.”) Instead, I concur, give another contemplative sigh, and realize I’m done loading my clothes. Can I borrow some Snuggle from you, dear reader? I’m springtime fresh out.