Laundromat Kindness

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Kindness at the Laundromat

 

I open the door to the Laundromat attached to the Shell station. It’s convenient—fill up, wash up, dry up. I’m in stealth mode, trying to make my 6’4” frame as small as possible, which is what I do when I enter a foreign place where I don’t know the protocol.

 

It’s been years since I’ve used a Laundromat. The last time was in a small, South Carolina town where I was doing an internship. I lived in an old hotel on Main Street that had been converted into apartments over a hair salon and an insurance agent’s office. 

 

It was across the street from a movie theater that showed a lot of Kung Fu movies starring Bruce Lee and others. I used to sit in the dark in my apartment’s big window drinking Sprite and watching movie patrons spill out onto the sidewalk as they practiced the martial arts moves they’d just seen. Kick. Punch. “Hi-yah!”

 

My apartment had no laundry facilities, so I went about a mile down the road to the Wash-a-lot Laundromat. In that place I was an anomaly. I was white and I was male. It was the black ladies and me sweating to the rhythm of large capacity washers and dryers. I don’t remember much except that they were kind to me, offering me helpful tips on separating whites from colors. Before you ask—yes, the irony was lost on me.

 

This time I had returned to the realm of public laundry because our dryer had died and it would be a week before we could take delivery of another. I crept through the door with clothes I’d already washed and was about to sneak them into a dryer in the corner out of the way. I heard a woman call out, “Are you dryin’?” I froze, sure I had already made the faux pas of not immediately declaring my intention and signing in with the Laundry Police.

 

I looked up with a “Who me?” expression, and a woman was looking my way. She was maybe 60 and had thin orange hair that stood straight on her head about three inches. She wore orange sandals and had an over-shirt divided vertically, half orange and half black, with the words “Blessed, Grateful, Thankful” in bold letters on the front. Next to her was a large man of similar age with long locks, a full beard, and a leather hat.

 

The woman said, “They’s 17 minutes left on this dryer if you’uns want it.” I stammered, “Uh, sure,” and carried my plastic tub over to set it down in front of the dryer. “Thanks,” I said, and that was the extent of our exchange.

 

We got our new dryer yesterday, and it’s humming along as I write. It’s convenient—no  driving, no scrounging quarters, and no lugging a tub of wet clothes required. But I’ve seen enough of Laundromats to know that in exchange for convenience, they's somethin' I'm missin'.

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