Have you ever been to a laundry mat? Yes? Ok, have you ever been a little confused with operating the devices? Well… recently I had a rather embarrassing time at a laundry mat. It all started like this…
My siblings and I were attending a music camp, a quartet camp actually, and after the first week and a half I had to do some laundry. Turns out I wasn’t the only one needing to do laundry. I ended up going with my three siblings and 2 other friends. Once we got there we made short work of finding available washer machines and getting our stuff washed. Once everything was done being washed we turned to the dryers…
Let me just say that I know how to do laundry. Really I do. No joke. I’ve known how to do laundry for years and am fully capable in managing the art of laundry. Anyways… I was able to find a huge dryer available, so I quickly loaded it with my clothes. That done I began to look over the directions. I guess I took longer than most people to look over those directions cause as I was contemplating which setting to use a Spanish lady came up to me and began to explain everything to me, “You put your quarters in this little slot, then turn this handle and choose which cycle you want…” Let me stress the point that I was doing fine by myself! Oh, and she didn’t work there. She just wanted to help the poor college student who knew nothing about laundry!!
I politely thanked her for the help, and then began to insert my quarters. As I did this I heard the Spanish lady having an animated discussion in Spanish with the lady who was there with her. I discreetly glanced back at them and saw that she kept pointing at me. After a moment they both began to laugh hysterically. I was just about to walk outside when one of my friends, who saw the whole thing, asked if I needed any more help with my laundry. I gave him a dirty look but he only laughed along with my siblings and other friend.
I was pretty embarrassed. I mean who knows how many people that lady is going to tell about the guy who didn’t know how to do his own laundry! I went outside to get away from the laughter. After a few minutes I went back inside and tried to maintain some sense of dignity.
I had been in there for only a few minutes when my dryer stopped. Now it had only been about 20 minutes max, and I had put in 6 quarters, which should have given me 8 minutes a quarter. Obviously something must be wrong. I cautiously approached the dryer and tried to determine what the problem was. As a safety precaution I called my mom, just in case she had been through a similar experience and could offer me some advice.
As soon as I began talking to her my siblings and friends burst out laughing. They thought it was so funny that I would call my mom for help. Whatever. Since I couldn’t figure out what was wrong with the dryer, and I was being laughed at once again, I went out side. I quickly filled my mom in on what had happened earlier with the Spanish lady. She laughed, not surprisingly, and told me I should ask them if they had any trouble with the dryer when they used it. Then I had to explain to her that if I ever wanted to be taken seriously I shouldn’t do ask them for help. Oh, and my ego wouldn’t allow me to do that anyway so she needed to come up with something else.
She promptly told me to suck it up. We ended our conversation and I stood there for a sec, trying to figure out what to do. I decided to ask the Spanish lady if she noticed anything wrong with the dryer. I went back inside, past all my laughing friends and siblings, and approached the lady. She said that it worked fine for her, and maybe I just needed to put more quarters in. Riiiiiiggghht… The problem was the door wouldn’t stay closed. After some tinkering I was able to fix the door and get the rest of the things dried. However, throughout that whole time those ladies, friends, and my siblings would periodically start laughing at my laundry skills.
Oh well… I guess it was kind of funny.
