Spinning

It’s 10 p.m. and I’m sitting at a blue plastic table, sipping a canned Coke. I’m surrounded by banks of whirring silver washing machines, and I’ve figured out that by sitting at this table, I can feel the blasts of cold air from the AC. It’s a nice counter to the heat radiating off all these dryers. This is the Wash Tub Coin Laundry, open 25 hours, according to a sign on the side of the building. I am not entirely sure that’s meant to be funny.

Visiting Laundromats every other week or so is something I’ve been doing since we moved. Of course, I should be doing it much more often than that but we literally use every piece of clean fabric in the house before I get weird about not having anything to dry off with after a shower, and surrender and load my car up with every rag we own.

Our landlords were kind enough to leave their washer and dryer in the house for us in case we wanted to adopt them, but they warned us that there was an issue with the washer that would need to be repaired. I tried to get a repair company to come out and look at it but they refused to do so since the house is rented. Besides, I think having the thing repaired to the degree it is probably going to need might cost more than I am willing to spend on a repair job. Just a hunch. I finally decided the other day to throw in the towel and just buy a new washing machine because going to the Laundromat is a pain in the ass when you’re single and you just have a trash bag full of your own clothes. It’s practically torture when you’ve got three towering baskets full of three people’s clothes — some of them sporting more than a little poop (I won’t tell you whose) — to wash and dry using every quarter you can possibly get your hands on.

The Wash Tub has an interesting ethos. There are three things on the wall that are not washing related:

• A poster featuring the characters of the Marvel Universe
• A poster featuring a blonde beach babe busting out of her bikini while reclining in water
• A calendar featuring pictures of churches

There’s also a pool table. When I first got here, there were a couple of guys playing a game. Now the guy who helped me get my clothes inside (such service!) is lying down on it, watching TV. There is a group of three teenagers who came in with no laundry; they just wanted to play the shitty arcade games, I guess. I feel like someone should tell them they’d get a better value for their money if they gave me their quarters to finish drying my jeans. It’s an investment.

I remember doing my laundry in college sometimes at that Laundromat next to La Siesta, near Murphy Center. (I seriously just had to sit here and think for a few minutes about what Murphy Center is called. Shameful.) I didn’t have any concept then of the sheer volume of laundry that was to come in my life. Just like I have no concept now of how much laundry is going to be involved as my child gets older and we stop being lazy and put him in two-piece outfits more often.

Life in Murfreesboro was ages ago. I think if I went back to my old haunts, I’d be really pissed that I let my youth slip away so quickly. But what can you do. I purposefully did not put a question mark on that last sentence. Because I am not asking.