Taking a stand one pair of undies at a time…

I’ve experienced my first laundry rage incident. And, I will wear it like a badge of honor.

It’s been coming, this laundry rage. You can only pay $5 to wash and dry 1 load of laundry for so long until it finally gets to you. Not to mention all of the schlepping. (refer to That Damn Crack) You really have to play well with others–you know: share your space, clean up after yourself, don’t take too long. After years and years of going to the laundry mat, it finally happened. I snapped.

Here’s how it went down. The laundry mat across from my house burned down about a year and a half ago. Finally, this week it reopened…shiny, clean, and new. I was folding my laundry at the table closest to the front door when someone committed the biggest laundry etiquette faux pas one can make. They were smoking at the front door. Mind you, the irony of someone smoking at the front door during the grand re-opening of a laundry mat that had burned down was not lost on me. But, had the doors not been open, and had the smoke not been pouring right in on my clothes, I probably would not have been affected at all.

But, this was not the case. This guy was just plain inconsiderate. My mantra in life is be kind, be generous, be honest. I figured that I needed to be honest with this guy. And, at first, I tried to be kind. And, I suppose that I was being generous, because, I didn’t say anything during his first cigarette. So, I focused on being honest.

I walked up to him and and asked him, “If you are going to smoke, would you please move away from the door?”

The Asshole responded, “Ohhhhhh, is my smoke boooooothering you?”

So, I said, “Uh, actually, yes. I don’t want my clothes to smell like smoke.”

The Asshole countered, “You should go fold them somewhere else.”

I turned around and ignored him. At least I tried, right? At this point the Asshole (I don’t know his name, so I call him The Asshole) grabbed his chair and slammed it down on the other side of the entrance, his smoke still pouring inside the front door. This is when my life mantra fully went out the window and I just acted. Pure instinct. I marched back outside and shouted at him, “You could at least try to be considerate.”

He laughed.

Despite years of rehearsing proper cussing techniques (check out @$%#!) my best retort was, “Fuck you.”

He threw his cigarette on the ground, which, mind you, is also a laundry mat etiquette faux pas, and went back to doing this laundry. But, hey, at least the smoking stopped. Of course, I did have to fold the rest of my clothes while they stood on the opposite side of the laundry mat and mocked me. But, I honestly didn’t care. I just stood there and smiled. After years of allowing people to walk all over me and my laundry, I finally took a stand. And, it worked! At least for a short while.

Five minutes later, just as I was finishing up, another guy went right outside the door and lit up. Be kind, be generous, be honest. Be kind, be generous, be honest…