Flipping your underwear inside out should tell you something

I was down to nothing.

A few pairs of old socks I don’t wear anymore. Wife-beaters instead of crisp, white undershirts. And no underwear. And I mean NO UNDERWEAR. As in, I have to flip my underwear inside out so I can wear them again.

This is the worst time of any laundry cycle: When you find yourself scavenging the dark recesses of your dresser drawers for clothing you haven’t seen since college…when you’re wearing “I Heart DC” tourist shirts because you have nothing else to put on under your dress shirt…when you’re digging through the bottom of your laundry basket for a pair of boxer briefs that won’t repel society…THAT’S when you know you need to do laundry.

I suppose most of you reading this have a washer and dryer in your home. Maybe they’re in the basement of your apartment building, or maybe you own them and have easy access whenever you so much as spill dulce de leche on your pants.

But for The Princess and me, we have a laundromat. We have to pack up our car like we’re Clark and Ellen Griswold going on vacation. Every few weeks or so, when we find ourselves unable to find a decent outfit to wear, we load what feels like a dozen baskets of unwashed clothing and drive to Spin Cycle.

Spin Cycle is a great place to do laundry. They have a bunch of machines that rival in size the WOPR in War Games and attract nearly every Latino family that resides in Montgomery County to its vast facilities. Unlike the Suds laundromat we used to go to in downtown Takoma Park, Spin Cycle promises an amusing adventure nearly everytime.

Here is what I learned during our last laundry expedition on Tuesday night:

Central Americans don’t believe I speak Spanish.

When the “cold” button on a 5-load washer didn’t seem to work, I walked up to one of the Spin Cycle employees and asked him, “No funciona el botón?” The dude just stared at me. “El botón de frio, no funciona?” Nothing. The guy stared at me like I was a zombie. I led him to the machine. Again, I asked him if the “cold” button was working or not, pressing it over and over again like Coco the monkey trying to communicate. Saying nothing, he pressed the “warm” button, seemingly happy that he had helped me, and walked away. I took all the clothes out and tried a different machine.

Beating your high score in Galaga will give you a hand cramp.

Spin Cycle has many arcade games in its facilities. While we wait for the wash to finish, The Princess and I like to play Galaga, the fixed-shooter arcade game where we get to fire at pixelated spaceships. We’re pretty evenly skilled so I win about as often as she does. But on Tuesday night, I was on fire. I scored 100,290 points, securing the 4th best score for this particular machine and a personal best. The Princess was impressed. I know this because she gave me a high-five. Of course, I later tried unsuccessfully to get out of folding because my hand cramped up. It didn’t work.

Pregnant 15-year-olds are surprisingly happy people.

Seeing a pregnant teenager can make one feel pity for her. But seeing her surrounded by family — mother, sister, brother — and doing laundry almost makes one feel happy for her situation. That strength of spirit can overcome any odds. That having unprotected sex at 14 was not the worst mistake you could have made. Then you see her pull out her math homework and realize this is not a Lifetime movie.

The Princess has a mild case of OCD.

I bought a bag of Skittles and offered The Princess some. I poured a few in her hand and watched her as she took only two at a time, of the same color, and ate them. “You only eat two at a time?” I asked her after swallowing a handful indiscriminately. “Of course. I pick two of the same color and eat them together.” I thought this was weird. But then I remembered my friend J-Vo’s need to have the number on her TV volume control to always be even and realized, we’re all a little OCD.

When the dryer won’t take your quarter, smack it until you break it.

After the freaking dryer took not just one but two of my quarters without working, I did what any normal person would do: I hit the machine. Hard. Twice. And then it broke. One of the employees walked over and told me, “You have to be gentle. Wait a minute and it’ll reset.” I thought about asking him if the dryer was self-aware enough to feel pain and needed some time to cool off, but I just waited. Sure enough, about a minute after I had smacked it into showing the dreaded “ERR” message on its screen, the dryer reset. He put in a quarter for me. It swallowed it and didn’t work. This was one emotional machine.

I now have clean clothes. Fresh underwear (not inside-out) and warm socks and shirts.

For now.

PHOTO CREDIT