34. Think Twice Next Time
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I used to be kind of an ass. I’ve really mellowed out since. But sometime around 2001–2002, I had an incident in my university dorm laundry room. I can pinpoint the year because my freshman year was the only year our laundry machines took quarters; machines accepted a university cash/card system the following years.
Anyway, I’m a freshman living in the dorms, it’s the weekend, and I’m doing laundry. We had an unwritten rule in the dorm laundry room: If you don’t attend to your laundry, it’s totally cool for someone to pull it out and throw it on the table (wet or dry).
If you don’t like it, just promptly attend to your laundry when the washer or dryer turns off. I assume it’s like this on a lot of campuses. I don’t like people touching my laundry, so I always set an alarm to be there when it’s done (on my digital watch, not my phone!).
I wash my clothes, throw them in the dryer, and set my timer. Soon after, my watch goes off, and I walk back to the laundry room only to find my dryer load completely wet and on the table.
Oh, hell no! Someone pulled my stuff from the dryer only to dump it out and dry their stuff for free. Well, good news: I had more quarters, so I could dry my stuff just fine.
Actually, I had enough quarters for my anonymous friend too — why didn’t they just ask? So I grab their clothes and throw them in an open washing machine with six of my spare quarters.
Actually, wait — I can drop another quarter in for a heavy cycle, which entitles you to an additional rinse and spin! I happen to have another quarter, so I do. The heavy cycle takes over an hour and a half to complete.
Now’s a good time to mention a nice feature the washing machines had that the dryers didn’t: they locked while in operation. The homie would have been stuck for about 100 minutes waiting for another chance to dry their clothes. I hope they made better choices the second time.
