I look nervously at my socks and then at the pile of clothes on the floor.

Whites and darks, whites and darks, whites and darks, I repeat to myself.

But I’ve been sweating a lot in these socks, and now they’re kind of off-white. Does that mean that I put them in the darks? My room looks like Hurricane Katrina went through a Kohl’s, and I struggle to grab every article of clothing. I never had to do laundry growing up, and now I realize that my mom made it look easy. The way she picked up clothes, put them in the washer, put the detergent in and pressed a button made it all look so stress-free!

I wipe away a tear of frustration with an old pair of underwear and then throw them across the room in disgust at what I had just done. Doing laundry has brought out the worst in me. I’ve put it off for so long now, as my mother never trained me in that herculean 12-step process that didn’t seem to take her much time at all. And because I’ve put it off for so long, my laundry bag bulges and will barely fit through my bedroom door. I yank it through but trip and fall, the weight of the bag crushing me.

“Dude, are you OK?” my roommate asks.

“I’ve fallen, and I can’t get up!” I cry for help.

“Are you serious? Dude, stop making such a big deal. It’s just laundry.”

My roommate has a cold heart, and he walks past my splayed body.

In what can only be described as a death march, I drag the laundry bag across the room, out the door and through the hallways of my dormitory. The veins on my arms scream out, and I can feel my fingers going numb. I can imagine going to class tomorrow and informing my teacher that I was unable to do homework last night because my hands wouldn’t work and because I had no clean clothes left and had to carry this wrecking ball of pre-shrunk cotton and elastic down the long winding hallways of Flynn Hall.

Someone in the dorm leaves his room and looks at me grunting and wheezing with a
puzzled expression.

“You OK, man?”

All I can do is grunt because this Gordian knot of a task has me out of breath.

“Do you need help with that? I did my laundry not too long ago, I can help you out.”

But I am no beggar, and I don’t need help; I just want someone to do things for me.
When I make it to the laundry room, whatever breath I have left comes out in hyperventilation. There are two washers and two dryers. This information overload gives me a headache, and it peaks to migraine level as I look and see an informational graphic detailing how to do laundry on the wall. I don’t have time for this, I don’t want explanation, I just want this to get done!

Despite a pounding headache that makes me feel like my head is crawling with ants, I am able to deduce that because I want to wash my clothes I should use a washer. I go over to a washer that seems to stew in its own enigmatic existence. There are five buttons labeled white, colors, brights, permanent press and delicates.

DELICATES?!? BRIGHTS?!!? PERMANENT PRESS?!?

Aren’t all clothes kind of delicate? Does that mean white and colors are for other stuff? But if all clothes are delicate then what kind of other stuff goes in whites and colors? Like armor? Chainmail? I have a Batman costume that lets me take a punch to the chest without too much pain — is that what it’s talking about? Am I supposed to wash my Batman costume? How are brights different from colors? What does permanent press even do? What if I don’t like it but I can’t get it back to normal because it is permanent?

In frustration I let out a string of Anglo Saxon four-letter words.

“Are you OK?” I hear someone yell from down the hall.

I grab a fistfull of clothes and shake it around. Look at what you’ve made me into. I’M A
MONSTER. Unable to follow the most basic steps, I shove all of my laundry into the washer. It doesn’t fit. Life isn’t fair.

“I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore!” I shout and pound at the machine, whose gaping mouth laughs at me. As if this wasn’t bad enough, people are starting to come out of the hall and look in at me, still asking me if I need their help. I blow my nose and wipe my eyes on a pair of jeans and rue laundry day for all of its confusion and public humiliation. If only there was some sort of service that could help people like me!

And that’s when my roommate comes into the laundry room. I can’t even see his pupils, and then I realize that that’s because his eyes are rolling into the back of his head. He takes out all of the clothing from the first washer and recreates the darks and whites piles from earlier. He then puts the darks in one washer, the whites in the other. He puts detergent in both and presses the colors and whites buttons on the machines. They somehow come to life.

“How did you do that?” I ask in wide eyed wonder.

“It’s not so hard, it just takes a bit of time to learn,” he replies in a calm-yet-annoying voice.

My nerves are finally starting to calm down but are jolted back when he mentions,
“We got 30 minutes on the washer; let me know when that’s done so that I can show you how to run the dryer!”

My blood runs cold, and I begin to perspire once again. I throw my hands to the sky in bitter defeat.

CURSE YOU, LAUNDRY DAY!

Jeffrey Langan can be reached at lang5466@stthomas.edu.