I did laundry tonight, or rather I’m in the procress of doing laundry. I just dropped off a few loads at Emerald Laundromat (that’s Emerald Laundromat South, the one that’s open 24 hours, not to be confused with Emerald Laundromat North) and rushed back here to tell my story.

I was relieved to pull up in my car (uhm… I have a car now. I need to blog about that) and see no other vehicles in the parking lot. You just never know who’s going to be there doing their laundry and how much of it they are going to have; I’m almost certain I’ve been there before when mountain people have made their yearly trek into Marion to do their laundry. Second full moon of the summer, I think, is when that usually occurs.

Anyway, I was surprised to walk in with my laundry and discover that there was a middle-aged, scraggle toothed woman wearing an Indiana Wesleyan University t-shirt (my alma matter!). She must work there; she was emptying the garbage. I peered over at some of the washing machines, trying to avoid her glance.

“Those are broken,” she said, foiling my plan of avoidance. “The ones behind ‘em are working.”

“Thanks,” I said, and hurredly shuffled to the working machines.

“Two dollars for those,” she said, pointing to the ones in front of me. “And three dollars for those larger ones,” she hurredly exclaimed, waving her finger just in the direction to the right of me.

“Thanks,” I said again. I started unloading my laundry and tried to decide if I should put on my headphones. I finally settled against it. After all, if I put on my headphones, it might look like I was staying for the long haul, and I wanted to get out of there as soon as possible.

I finished putting my laundry in the washing machines, had a momentary fit with the change machine, and dropped in the appropriate number of quarters. The dipslay on the washers said my clothes would be ready in twenty-five minutes.

“Thanks,” I said to the employee, trying to rush out the door before she could say anything else. She took a step towards me.

“Your clothes should be done in… oh… twenty five minutes,” she said, extolling the same wisdom granted to me by the digital display on the washing machines themselves.

“Thanks,” I said for the last time and left.

It’s been twenty-five minutes, but I don’t want to go back and repeatedly say thanks again.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 24th, 2006 at 7:26 pm and is filed under City of Marion, IWU. Both comments and pings are currently closed.