Monday, August 4, 2014

Life Lessons at the Laundromat

In college, I held at least two jobs at pretty much any given time. How else would I finance my trips to Europe?

At one point I worked as a substitute teacher (that's a topic for several other posts), a grader for Math 101, and at the local laundromat. I would often double up and grade math papers while I was working at the laundromat, leaving more time for drinking studying.


When I wasn't putting gold stars and "Way to go, Tiger" (our mascot was the tiger, and I'm REALLY cool) on students' papers, I was learning some very important life lessons at the laundromat.

1. If someone has a hook for a hand, don't act like you recognize them because of the hook.

This guy with a hook would come in every Sunday and I'd politely greet him and we'd maybe chat a bit, or he'd read a magazine at the bar while I served him stale coffee. We were definitely not friends or even aquaintances but we were friendly. When I ran into him at the gas station I was like "Hey, how are you?" and then realized I'd only recognized him because of his hook. To him, I was just another college girl so he couldn't place me at first.

Long. Awkward. Pause.

Avoiding looking at the hook, I tried to act casual. "Um, yeah, so I guess I'll see you Sunday at the laundromat?" I said, my face turning bright red.

His face lit up with recognition. "Oh yeah! Sure."

Crisis averted. But in the future, I remembered to never recognize someone by their hook. It's come in handy (ha, see what I did there?) exactly zero times since. Still, I'm prepared.


2-8. Not so quick there, killa! Head over to BLUNTmoms to read the rest of this fabulous post! Because believe it or not, there are SEVEN more things I learned from my days at the laundromat...

Article on BLUNTmoms

What about you? What laundry-related words of wisdom do you have to share?