God Bless my roommate Erica. To live with me, one must be extremely patient and yet, informative.
Erica comes home to see all my clothes hanging in various places around the townhome we share in Uptown. T-shirts draped over dining room chairs, bras swung over the staircase and even socks placed strategically on top of our kitchen table. (Don’t know why I decided to place the socks on the kitchen table; hey at least they were clean.
“Ashleigh, what are you doing?” Remember when you’re little and your parents would call you by your first and middle name if you really crossed the line; Erica calling me Ashleigh is equivalent to that. I’m usually Ash.
Before she’s able to say another word, I shout, “Our dryer is broken. I’m over it. Err.” Those that know me well know that I say, “I’m over it,” on a daily basis. Those who have ever attempted an argument with me may be familiar with what I would call an endearing, “Errr,” sound. Yes, I chose the correct word, endearing. This sound is prevalent when I’m either a. arguing why the Astros are not the worst team in baseball or b. just plain frustrated.
“Ash, I used the dryer the other day and it worked fine. Did you clean out the vent?” Erica questions without any trace of anger. If there was a sarcastic text, I would insert it here.
“Yes, I cleaned the vent.” Have never done that, nope, not once. (This will cause issues later on.)
“Then how is it broken,” she asks.
“Erica, it just never works when I want it to. Seriously our dryer is possessed; it has a mind of its own. And its stubborn mind never wants to dry my clothes. Sometimes it will work, but most of the time it chooses not to.”
“Well are you putting too many clothes in there,” she replies logically.
‘No, that’s not it,” I stammer. “Also, the little knob thing is broken. After you turn it; it won’t lift up. It broke.”
“What do you mean it broke? Did you break it? Also, you don’t lift up the knob. You turn it in order to choose your dryer setting.”
(Honestly, does anyone change their setting? That is almost as complicated as choosing between darks and lights. What do you do with strips? And also, on that note, how can you tell if something is delicate? My A&M shirt needs to be handled with care, but apparently there isn’t a setting for favorite college t’s.)
Erica continues, “You should be pressing a button.”
Now I’m frustrated. “Erica, we don’t have a button. It’s the knob thing on the dyer; you turn it and then lift up. If our dryer wasn’t the devil reincarnated, it would start.”
Erica rushes into the laundry room. The knob to choose which setting you would like to heat has been disabled by me. Furthermore, the front of the dryer looks like it was caught in a hail storm. The hail storm being the bottom of my foot!
Picking up the broken knob and examining the damage, Erica says, “Ashleigh, you don’t lift up the knob, you turn it. We have a button that you must press to start the machine. Oh that’s right, you probably can’t see the button because your clothes, which I dried have been covering it for months.”
“We have a start button? When did this happen? I have never pressed it, not once. Are you sure? I mean how come my clothes would sometimes dry and other times they won’t. That just isn’t logical.”
“Because, I pressed it! I would wonder why you would leave the house and just put wet clothes in the dryer and not start the machine, so I PUSHED the start button for you,” she explained.
Giggling nervously, “Now it all makes sense because every time I left the house the dryer would work and when I planned my day to stay home and clean, it wouldn’t.”
Erica shakes her head and goes upstairs. I’m not sure if she is shaking her head at this minor incident or the bogus statement of me actually planning a day to solely clean.
“Can you believe I did that?” I say laughing.
“Honestly, Ash, at this point nothing surprises me.”
“Well, at least I didn’t burn the house down,” I joke.
Editor’s note: A month later, I almost burnt down our house. Our “broken” dryer caught on fire. A little incident with lent. The firemen asked if my parents were home. No, Erica was not home yet.
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