Laundry Lessons

Been meaning to, needing to wash clothes for DAYS. Crammed the washing machine with a bit more than I would normally wash in one load cause I was so behind in doing laundry that things had just piled up. It was a load of mixed colors, to be washed on cold with cold rinse cycle: 3 pairs of cargo shorts (New -- American Eagle sale last spring.) 4 or 5 short-sleeve shirts (a new Gap Hawaiian print shirt, 3 or 4 button-up shirts from the AE sale), a couple of polo-style shirts (one Brooks Brothers, one Izod). A pair of NICE J. Crew button-fly jeans. A long-sleeve trendy-striped button-down shirt.

My first sign that something was wrong? When I opened the dryer door and saw bluish-black smears on the inside of the door. ("Hmmm.") Then I pulled first one shirt and then another and noticed the bluish-black smears on them as well. ("What the--?") Then, like a mad man, I was pulling everything out onto the floor. Everything. Everything had these bluish-black spots and smears on it. Everything.

I looked into the white interior of the dryer. Bluish-black smears EVERYWHERE. The back wall, the white drum, the sticky-out things --- all coated with blue-black smears and streaks.

Then I knew what had happened. I'd left a ballpoint pen in one of the pockets of one of the cargo shorts. Found the pen -- empty, the white barrel smeared with ink stains. And I found Ground Zero -- the pocket of the formerly khaki-colored shorts, a black-blue spot about an inch in diameter soaked from the inside of the shorts to the outside of the pocket.

Everything in that load of laundry is ruined.

Yeah, some of it was a few years old. Some was a year or two old. But a LOT of it was just a few months old. I figure I'm looking at $300 to $400 if I were to replace it all. Fortunately, it the end of the season. Wouldn't be wearing short-sleeve shirts and cargo shorts much longer anyway. But still...

This doesn't even compare, but I think I can empathize a little better with people who lose everything in a flood, a fire or a hurricane. It's all just STUFF. It can be replaced. It was temporal all the time.

Who knew the lessons I would learn in that load of laundry?