Saturday, March 27, 2010

This post smells like fabric softener

Saturday morning I went to the laundromat, since I still haven't gotten my dryer fixed.

While I was there, feeling embarrassed about folding my underwear with other people walking by, a young mom came in with two kids.
The kids were loud and rambunctious, pretty much what you'd expect from two little kids who are terribly bored and stuck in a laundromat with their mom.

She called the older kid "Dante", which I thought was a pretty cool name. Since it's also the name of a guy who wrote about hell, it has double meaning when applied to a rambunctious kid.

To be fair, the older kid (maybe 7 years old) did have well-behaved moments, and even took some time helping his mom take stuff out of the dryer. He seemed to be basically a good kid, give or take. :)

His little brother (maybe 4 or 5) was the one who couldn't quite behave. Poor mom kept telling him to sit patiently and quietly-- two words which don't quite register with kids that age. Again and again I heard her call his name and tell him to stop doing this, stop doing that.

Soon it reached that point where she used his first AND middle name.

It worked, for about the same amount of time a snowflake lasts on the tongue of a fever victim.

Poor mom.
Eventually he'll grow up, and she'll wish he was young again.

By that time, I really, really hope my dryer is fixed.
.

5 comments:

PattiKen said...

I know your pain. I still haven't quite forgiven my husband for being away on a business trip (in an air-conditioned hotel room, I'm sure) when the washer died of heat prostration and I had to go to the laundromat on the hottest day of the year. The place was filled with kids acting out their heat rash agony.

Marilyn said...

I kind of liked watching the people at the laundromat... not enough to go back just for the fun of it, but I sure met interesting folks there.

Janna said...

PattiKen: Yikes! That must have been an amazing amount of noise and mayhem. I can only imagine.

Marilyn: I kept wondering whether or not I was the weirdest one there. Maybe the other people went home and blogged about the weird 40-year-old chick sitting there folding her underwear...

MikeWJ at Too Many Mornings said...

I feel really, really sad about your dryer.

Actually, I feel really, really sad about you because you have a busted dryer and have to go the laundromat with screaming kids and worn-out mothers and crazy meth addicts who try to rob you.

Oh, you haven't met the crazy meth addicts yet?


Uhmm, maybe that's just a commercial I saw. I wouldn't give it another thought.

Janna said...

MikeWJ: I can't remember whether there were any meth addicts or not. Wait a minute... is poor memory one of the signs of meth addiction?