The Laundry

He came pounding up to the sixth floor and rang the doorbell around 19.30. "You have to come downstairs. I just met a cool couple and we're at the bar having a drink. I put the clothes in the dryer. We can run down and grab them and then go to the bar together."

I was feeling groggy and gross but went anyway. On the way to the laundromat, we had the following convo:

"You know, maybe you shouldn't put clothes in the dryer and leave them unattended. Nobody's going to stop a washing machine, but it's really easy to steal clothes from the dryer."

"Oh, it's fine. I only put them in 15 or 20 minutes ago."

"15 or 20 minutes?!? In the dryer? It only takes six or seven!"

"Oh, well, I didn't know. They'll be fine."

At this point I take off running, visions of my Victoria's Secret skivvies being fried in the dryer. They're synthetic, people! We get to the laundromat and a gay dude says to the Boy, as his boyfriend looks on, amused, "Luckily I saw you leave because you forget to press start on your machines. I went ahead and did it for you."

And just how much time was left on those machines? That's right: 40 minutes.

The gay guys were neatly folding their clothes and sort of smirking at the Boy. They could tell he had to bring in reinforcements in the form of yours truly.

"40 minutes?" I cried, "You know, our clothes would only fit toddlers if you kept them in there for 40 minutes!" I kept on yacking away while the gay boys just tried to keep in their laughter. Their towels were very clean and white, neatly stacked. I wanted to kill them for their impressive laundry skillz.

Then I looked inside the machines. "This shirt is dry-clean only!" and "Ach! Stop, stop! This skirt can't be put in the dryer!!" and other variations on those themes came spilling out as I desperately tried to salvage the clothes which had already been spinning 15 minutes too many in the machine.

His response: "Man, you act like this is the end of the world. If your sweater's too small now, we'll just give it to the homeless. No big deal."

In unrelated news: I have a chest, throat and ear infection. The doctor gave me a look that said, "Naughty, naughty girl. You should have come in sooner" when I saw him in the office today. I thought to myself, "Mean, mean medicine man. You made me wait 2.5 hours in your waiting room today." Vive la France and their 20-euro doctor visits. In the end, the guy gave me the drugs and I'll recover. Luckily I stopped listening to the voice in my head that had been saying, "It's a cold, it'll blow over." Because you know what? It wouldn't have.