Jammin' to the oldies at the Laundromat
I went to the Laundromat this morning so I could knock out five loads of laundry. Monday morning is a great time to go because no one is there - what fool besides me does laundry on a Monday morning? Actually, there were three other fools there, but more than enough machines available for us all to get our stuff done in one fell swoop. The speakers overhead play an oldies radio station. Oldie oldies; mostly stuff from the sixties with a bit of fifties thrown in. It wasn't too bad folding shirts to the sounds of "Summer in the City" and "Monday, Monday". There are advantages to the Laundromat in that you can knock out a bunch of laundry at one time and they have those great folding tables. There are disadvantages too and the expense is the least of them. Usually I have to contend with feral children running wild and there's a new breed now that I find particularly annoying - the obnoxious 8 to 14 year olds with cell-phones who spend their entire time chatting with friends in that 8 to 14 year old speak that the age group uses with their friends. I did it too at that age except it was only when I was actually with my friends; no cell phones back then. My parents don't know how good they had it that they didn't have to listen to that shit. Ah, but Monday mornings seem to be the ticket around this. No children, no adolescents, just a couple of guys that drove up in campers and one woman drinking a 40 oz. Folks, if you ever see me drinking a 40 oz Icehouse beer at the Laundromat at 9:00 in the morning, just shoot me. Then again, maybe she was on vacation. I've been known to drink a beer at 9 am on vacation. And maybe she works the night shift so her 9:00 am beer is my 6:00 pm beer. Who knows, but I guess I'm getting old and crotchety since I was so quick to judge her as some hard-core alcoholic. Maybe part of that quick judgment was the dress she was wearing. She took the "sew simple" concept to a new level. Cut out the shape of a sundress and just sew the sides and straps together - don't bother seaming any of the edges. I give her credit; it worked, she had a dress, but I couldn't help but hope she didn't have any other dresses like that in the washing machine and would end up with a load of tangled threads. And so there I was at the Laundromat, making up stories about the people I saw there, coming up with reasons why they were there, spinning background tales to explain their presence in that spot at that moment, knowing full well that none of it was true, but damn it made for a good story to pass the time.