I still remember as a child being sent outside to take the
clothes off the backyard clothesline. I still remember how embarrassing it was
to see my underwear hanging right there in plain sight. I still remember how gross
it was to take another family member’s underwear off the clothes line. I had to
touch it and everything. I think my mother used the clothesline when she could,
not because she didn’t have an electric clothes dryer, but because things
smelled better and the house got less heated. Anyway, it was what people did in
the days before dryers. Some habits die hard.
Let’s get one thing straight from the beginning. I do not
want to go back to the days of clotheslines and clothespins. I do not want my
unmentionables hanging outside for the whole neighborhood to gawk at. And dryer
sheets do better at providing a fresh scent than the air surrounding my dog’s
living quarters, or perish the thought, my husband’s bird feeders!
However, suffice it
to say my dryer and I have never been the best of friends. My husband and I can’t
remember when we bought it. We can’t even remember if we bought it. It might
have come with our house when we moved here in 1986. Doesn’t matter so much how
old it is, I guess. It rips buttons off shirts just because they were hanging
by a thread. It makes all this yukky lint stuff I have to clean out all the
time and it eats socks. No kidding, I have trash bags full of mateless socks to
prove this astonishing fact.
What’s always annoyed me most about it, though, is the buzz.
When it’s done drying it makes a horrible buzz that resonates clear through the
whole house. It sounds like my alarm clock only ten times louder. No pleasant
jingly bell or little rhythmic beeps but a great big loud resounding buzz.
As if that’s not irritating enough, if I ignore my dryer the
first time because I’m busy doing something else, it just keeps buzzing at
intervals a few minutes apart.
Supposedly it’s telling me to “Quit being lazy. Take the clothes out and go
hang them up already” I have suspicions that what it is really saying is “I’m
tired of turning around over and over, blowing all this hot air.” I know this
because sometimes my clothes aren’t even dry when it buzzes. I have to restart
the whole thing whether it likes it or not.
A repairman (here to look at my washer – not the dryer) once
told me that my dryer would live longer than me. “Yeah those kind work forever.
It’s one of the best.” My heart sank at those words. So there was no hope of
getting a new dryer some day – a dryer with a different sound. I should mention
here that I can turn the buzz off. Sometimes I do when I can’t tolerate it
anymore. But, without that friendly reminder I forget I have clothes in the
dryer, they get wrinkly, I get behind on laundry and the story just gets worse
from there.
OK – all this to say – my dryer took ill a couple weeks ago.
It could turn clothes around in that metal tub as well as ever but the hot air
was missing. And it takes forever to dry clothes without the hot air. Just
sayin.
Could my dryer have met its untimely demise? I was hopeful but we must
take care not to send it to a premature grave. So my husband, being the sweet
guy that he is, loaded Old Buzzer Baby in the back of his pick-up to haul to
the repair shop. Bonus – among some other disgusting stuff I found roughly $1.75
in change underneath the thing. Wow. How long had it been sitting there to
collect all that? But there’s more. On its way to the back end of the truck,
Mr. Blow Hard gave up another $1.50 in change. Nice tip for my hauler guy.
And this is the way I heard the rest of the story as told to
me by my husband.
Hubs: It was like playing slot machines. About $5.00 in
change spilled out all over the cement right there in front of the appliance
place.
Me: From the dryer?
Hubs: Yep
Me: What did you do?
Hubs: I picked it all up, of course.
Hmmm… Kind of glad I wasn’t there. Apparently the repair
people got a good laugh at the whole thing. So we’re up to around $8.25 now.
Can anyone tell me how change accumulates in a dryer? Seriously, there is no
hole, opening or vacant spot inside that dryer tub that something the size of a
quarter could remotely begin to fit through. But, here were all these quarters,
dimes, nickels and pennies.
Me: Must have been from your pockets over the years
Hubs: Nope. I never carry change. I can’t stand to carry
change. I always get rid of it. Must be yours.
Me: Can’t be mine. I’m a girl. Girl’s have purses for things
like that. Check out the bottom of my purse and you’ll see what I mean.
Mutual conclusion: Son in college. He brings home his
laundry sometimes. Must be his.
Me: You can put it towards the repair bill
Hubs: No, I think we’ll give it Son #3 so he can do his
laundry - at college.
Oh. Good idea. But it got even better. When my husband went
to pick up the repaired (yes- they fixed it!) dryer later that day, $6.00 and
some odd cents was waiting on the counter for him. “It came out of your dryer,”
the man informed him. I’m sure he must have had a smirk on his face.
So, almost $15 profit from our adventure. Of course the repair bill
was quite a bit higher than that but it still made for a good story. And it
also made me think. What hidden treasures might be lurking where you least
expect to find them? Check your heart. It’s always a good place to discover
those things.
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