Saturday, January 01, 2005

 
Good things come unexpectedly. I could no longer put off laundry by New Year’s Eve. As I was sorting 10 kilos of dirty laundry, another wash-and-dryer asked me if I was going to be around for a while. When I gave him my “what-do-you-want” face, he asked if I was going to be around for fifteen or even ten minutes. I said, well, most likely but that I was going to leave after I put my dirties in the wash. He took that as a sufficient enough yes to tell me to look after his clothes in dryer number 20, the only dryer on, while he went to the post office. As I continued to sort, another guy came in and stood in front of dryer number 20, as though it were his. I started to pay attention: maybe there was reason to believe clothes are stolen from Laundromats! Even though he didn’t try to open the dryer, I was still high on red alert. A few minutes later, he came towards me and told me that the washer I was using wasn’t working and had in fact leaked yesterday. I said thanks and then started removing the other washer’s wet but clean clothes so that I could use it. He then told me that it would be better to use the smaller washers on the other side of the laundromat, but I told him that I needed the larger washers since I had too much laundry. I then noticed that he was awfully close to my bag that I had left on the table. So I picked it up and put it on. A minute later, the guy left. He didn’t have any laundry.

He came in not to steal the other guy’s drying clothes but to steal my purse! And my first washer probably worked, but he was trying to distract me so that I wouldn’t react fast enough to him running off with my purse! So if I hadn’t been on alert for this other guy’s laundry, this guy might very well have succeeded in his evil plot to snatch my purse. Even though I begrudgingly kept an eye out for my laundry neighbor, it made good sense for me in the end. When the he came back from the post office, I told him that he was right to be suspicious of people. When I told him about this suspicious guy, he said that the neighborhood isn’t what it used to be.

posted by Open Mouth 7:36 PM