The Perfect Song Blog

Due to circumstances beyond my control I’m a temporary bachelor.  It wasn’t too bad the first week.  Nathan and I worked through the food Leigh had cooked.  We’ve kept the kitchen fairly clean and the rest of the house is passable.

This weekend I couldn’t put it off any longer. I had to wash my clothes.  The house is three stories with the bedroom on the third floor.  I pulled everything out of the hamper and threw them over the hallway railing to the dining room floor.  I’d seen Leigh do this before.  This was the most efficient way of getting the clothes down one floor.

I scooped them up in a big pile and headed to the basement floor and dropped them in the laundry room.

That’s when things got complicated.

I realized I didn’t know what came next.

I was starting to feel a little frantic, then vaguely remembered something about separating white clothes from the coloreds.

I did that, stuffed the socks and underwear into the washer’s maw and closed the lid.

I started reading all the words on the washer panel.  Who in hell came up with all this stuff?  “Heavy.  Normal.  Light.”  Are you supposed to weigh the clothes before you put them in?  I looked around for a clothes scale but found nothing.  What the hell.  It’s underwear and socks and they didn’t feel heavy.  I took the safe route and chose “normal.”  What’s more normal than socks and underwear?  They’re one of the few things men and women have in common.  They have to be normal.

I pulled down the detergent and poured some in.  Yes, I know there are directions on how much to use but I’m a guy and we don’t read directions, at any age.  I studied the washer panel again.  What in God’s name is “pre-wash”?  You either wash something or you don’t.  Pre-washing sounds so unnatural.  I pictured a team of elves in the washer with little scrubbers looking for stains they could make disappear and when they were done the  chief elf would pop his head up and give me the thumbs up.  “You’re allowed to wash now!”

I skipped the prewash and studied some more.  Hot. Cold.  Lukewarm.

Wash.

Spin.

I realized with fast growing despair that nowhere did it say “start.”

We have a washer that’s sitting here with enough options to fly and land it but there is nothing that tells you hot to start it!

The big knob on the right was the most obvious so I pulled it.

The knob came off.

I put it back on and pushed it.  Nothing.

I started turning it like a roulette wheel.  Somewhere in the 5 o’clock position I heard water start running.

I don’t know what I did or how I did it, but running water was good enough for me.  I stepped out of the laundry room, closed the door and hoped the pre-wash elves could swim.