Series 8, my ass

It's been too long since I've waxed philosophical about the laundromat. Actually, it's just been too long since I've been to the laundromat. Oops!

But I didn't come here to air my dirty laundry. Not today, anyway.

My long, long-overdue trip to the laund-O-rama started out blissfully enough, with a whole row of machines waiting for me, just for me, and my soap wasn't frozen. I like it when the laundry begins like that. I'm easy to please, folks. When it came time to dry, I was pleased to find six consecutive dryers empty on the Wall of Good Dryers.


The bank on the right is the Wall of Good Dryers. All the other dryers in this place are crap.

It was great. I set my carts in front of my dryers and skipped out to grab some lunch. When I returned with some food that I really shouldn't have but do anyway, but don't tell my doctor, ssshhhhhh, I noticed a big red van was parked by the door. As I ate and waited for my clothes to dry, I noticed an unusually large and unruly group of children running between the laundromat and the red van, back and forth, back and forth.

When I was ready to go inside, I realized it was even worse than I had imagined. The front of the laundromat was swarming with what I presume to be the offspring of the two adults in the middle of the swarm. It was stunning; there were so many of them, and they were in such constant motion, and there was such chaos, that there was no proper way for me to count them. I'm prepared to say there were at least six, but I suspect more, many more than that.

All the carts people had set in front of their dryers were gone, now in the hands of what I began to think of as the Scavenger Children. I hunted around and found a couple of carts and began to unload my dry clothes, and as the Scavenger Children ran, screamed, touched things not theirs, and generally rampaged as their mom and dad halfheartedly admonished them, "Now, get over here!" I began to think of the parents as the type who would send their children into a neighbor's burning trailer to grab valuables (to keep). An older gentleman tapped me on the shoulder and asked, a touch accusingly, "Did you 'borrow' the cart I had here?" I indicated that I had not, but he kept looking at me suspiciously the rest of the time we were there. I'd seen the "Sportsmen for Bush" bumper sticker on his car, and I really hoped it wouldn't be a shooting offense to him. I just don't wanna be shot for a cart I never took, anyway. Mister, look around - obviously, the Scavenger Children took it.

The whole laundromat was swirling with the thunder of children gone completely out of control. I traded a number of "Oh my god!" raised-eyebrow looks with nearby patrons (except for mister "borrowed" cart, who continued to give me sour looks for the duration - I think my shades and my hippie hair put him off). When their wash was loaded at last, the whole army was trundled out to the van, presumably to make life a living hell for some shopkeeper or restauranteur while the clothes washed.

I came away from the laundromat with two words in mind: Birth control. If only it could be retroactive in some cases.

Oh, and remember this vending machine?



Well, there's a reason it's a hand-drawn sign and not a placard featuring Series 8 Homies - because it's still full of Series fucking 7 Homies! I fear I will have to go to Pro-Clean just to get my Series 8 Homies. Sure, I could just order all of Series 8 from the Homies web site, but that's not the point. It's the thrill of the vending machine that gets me, the dropping of the plastic egg, that little moment of not knowing which one is inside. But when it's the same ones I've been getting for months already, well, as BB King once lamented, the thrill is gone.