Incident at the Laundromat

Apparently no good vacation day goes unpunished.

I took a couple of days off to use up some earned time before it expired, so today was able to run some errands without cramming them into those after-work hours or running around like a crazy person on Saturday and Sunday. You know, going to the bank to get my rent check, stopping in at the gym to update my card on file from WaMu to Chase so they can continue to receive my monthly donation...

I took a couple of loads of sheets and towels to the laundromat, too, since I knew it wouldn't be crowded at 11:30 on a Monday morning. Washed without incident, plopped everything into a couple of dryers, and ran over to the local 99-cent "Department Store" to see what fell off the truck this week. (Hmm, 100-packs of Melitta #4 filters for $3.99? I ran out of coffee filters this morning! Sold! Bars of Pears Glycerine soap for 99 cents? Sure! I carried around the $4 bright chrome silverware drainer, $8 curtain panels, and large bottle of $3 Johnson's Baby Lotion for a while before putting them all back. I'm getting a little better at that impulse shopping thing.)

I got back to the laundromat with a few minutes left on one of my dryers, and I opened it to see if my towels were dry. Well, they were dry, but with the dryer door wide open, the dryer continued to turn. Strange.

Suddenly (perhaps fed by the oxygen I let into the dryer by opening the door) my towels burst into flames! With the dryer still turning! So I'm looking into an industrial-sized cauldron of whirling flames, at which point, I slammed the dryer door, turned to the laundromat lady and said, "Ummm...I think we have a fire here." She toddled over and looked through the glass, but I guess the combination of me closing the dryer door (cutting off excess oxygen) and the tumbling, no flames were to be seen. She opened the dryer and pulled out all of my towels and sheets, which didn't have any obvious signs of having been on fire, and only the usual commercial dryer slightly crispy hot smell.

"I swear I'm not crazy," I said, as she gave me that look and went back to folding someone else's clothes. "Look!" I held up my red Ralph Lauren towel which, if you looked really closely at it, showed some evidence of scorching and showed it to the girl at the next dryer. All of my towels from that load do have a sort of singed look.

"You were remarkably calm about that," was all she said, and went back to unloading. You have to love New Yorkers who have seen it all.

I finished shaking and folding everything and went home, but the entire time those bags of laundry have been sitting in the corner, I've been giving them the hairy eyeball, waiting for them to spontaneously combust, as if some memory of flames might cause them to erupt again.

I figure it's only a matter of time before I hear sirens on Bushwick Avenue, look out my kitchen window, and see the Laundromat building going up in flames. Either that, or by opening the dryer door before the cycle was finished, I merely unleashed some demon from hell that didn't want my soul, but only wanted to consume my linens.

I know I just expended a whole lot of words to talk about a ridiculous 45-second situation at the neighborhood laundromat, but honestly -- What the Fuck?