Judy and the laundromat...

Good Sunday morning, y'all! Dick and I are currently somewhere over the Pacific, so I have a guest writer today. My friend and BSP sista Judy is a hoot. She tells the most marvelous stories, sometimes about almost nothing. I love her witty style, but most of all, I love her good heart. Her DH Jerry isn't too bad either. Hugs to you both. They have moved to a new city and are in temporary housing until their new house closes next week, so she is having to use public washing facilities. Enjoy...oh yes, printed with permission:

Any aspiring writer should spend time in a laundromat, not necessarily to do clothes but to take notes. Life is at its most varied there for character studies, not a bar, not a mall, not an airport or even a hospital waiting room.

You see things in a laundromat that would make Jerry Springer call it quits. You see things that are plain unexplainable.

Today, we went there again. This time Jerry dropped me and the clothes off and went to do other errands. I was pleasantly surprised that it was almost empty, lots of machines open AND in working order, no unattended children....well almost.

There are signs in the laundromat to 'please not leave your clothes unattended.' I have been thinking about that. The mental images are almost too dangerous to report. If I left the laundromat (and my clothes), would they become rowdy and do damage? If I left my clothes, did I need an attendant to do it? That one is verging on probable. Why are there signs about attending clothes, and none about attending children?

There was a real healthy young man talking on his cell phone for the benefit of the entire county and using some truly colorful language. His lip was pierced and his biceps (large) tattooed. I gave him till I had loaded all my washers to cut it out, and then I decided that one of us present should have some self respect.

I went over to him and tapped him on his biceps. I was polite but firm. I told him that his call was not quite private and that he needed to clean up his language. This could well be the end of the story for me!

He went dead quiet, and I assumed he was just showing me how it was done. Then he said in a very polite and lowered voice, "Yes Ma'am."

No more loud or naughty talk out of him in the laundromat. He did his clothes quietly and left. Guess, my "Mother" license hasn't quite expired.

So now I was still waiting on my clothes, when a man came in to pick up laundry that had been done for him. It was a huge stack of gray, not charcoal or shark mist or battleship, just depressing mop gray toilet seat covers. Who would want ONE much less a whole stack???
I thought of institutions that might use that color, but they don't use toilet seat covers. Then a woman came and she picked up a whole stack of them, too. Lordy, I thought, prison? Nursing home? Juvie?

Then Jerry finally came back and I told him about my "tank cover mystery." He told me (without even having been there himself), those weren't toilet seat covers, those are floor polishers!!!

Then there were two women who came in with industrial sized garbage bags of dirty clothes that they had to drag. For the entire time that I was washing and drying my clothes, and believe me it's a long endless stretch of gray time, they continued to bring in bags, tubs (jumbo), and baskets of laundry. They had just finished unloading all their wash as we were leaving.

So I asked myself, where would anyone get that many clothes??? Prison, nursing home, juvie???

The answer to that mystery will remain unanswered, unless they are still there when we have to go back next week.
Hugs,
Judy

The end. I hope you enjoyed the story.