If doing the laundry is a regular part of your life, you had better be prepared for moments of deep chagrin. These moments are rare, but memorable. They are typically preceded by an odd sound. There you are, lifting the lid and pulling out armloads of clothing still damp from the spin cycle. Here comes a pair of trousers, all twisted, that you shake out before you put them in the dryer. Here’s a handful of socks and T-shirts, wadded together. Here comes –
And then you hear it. It might be a “bang” or a “thunk” or a tiny musical “plink,” but whatever form it takes, the sound signifies that you have just finished laundering something that really, really, will not have benefited from agitation in hot soapy water.
Depending on your mood, and whether, in the back of your mind, you remember wondering guiltily whether you had checked pockets before you threw the stuff in the machine, you will at this point let out a yell, or an expletive, or just a pathetic whimper.
After that there’s nothing to do but to haul everything out and see what poor, sad, mangled object lies beneath.
If the household gods are smiling, maybe it’s something that can survive laundering, like money. Maybe it can be dried and oiled and rescued, if it’s a pocketknife or one of those multipronged Allen wrenches.
However, if the bang/thunk/plink comes from anything more sophisticated than a knife or a wallet, you’re out of luck.
“So that’s where his cell phone was,” I was heard to cry (after using some more colorful language) a month ago.
This week, a friend of mine was in the same straits. At the bottom of her washing machine drum rested a shiny scarlet rectangle with a rhinestone sticker still on it. It was her daughter’s brand-new iPod, drowned.
“I just looked at it and tried to blink it away,” she told me, “like “I Dream of Genie.’ ”
People who work with more dangerous machines than your average namby-pamby, garden-variety washer have much darker tales of chagrin, of course. They, too, report the strange blinking moment of disbelief that comes with witnessing the consequences of an unwise, self-committed act.
My father, who has worked with table saws all his adult life, found himself gazing with blank incredulity last winter at the fountain of blood shooting from his hand. It wasn’t until the pain hit that he understood what had happened. Among carpenters and woodworkers, this is apparently quite common. First comes the accident, then a disbelieving pause, and then — ow.
Compared to saws, the menace of a laundry machine seems pretty milk. It’s not as though washing something — even something expensive like a phone — can hurt you. Though, come to think of it, I did once hear an object rattling around in the drum that turned out to be a huge brass-cased bullet. My son had dug it out of the mud in the woods, and put it in his pocket. It was very clean by the time I saw it.
Meghan Cox Gurdon’s column appears on Sunday and Thursday. She can be contacted at [email protected].
