Of Lice and Men

I received the come-get-your-child call from school at 8:45 last Friday, just fifteen minutes after morning drop-off. The lice outbreak I’d been reading about in school emails had caught up with us.  This meant my workday was over. It also meant a monkey wrench in my ambitious weekend plans.

From school, my good-sport-kid and I drove to the drugstore. There we bought lice shampoosticides. Then it was home for washing, combing, picking, and checking. Hours later when we finished, it was time to retrieve my other child from school. By the dinner hour we’d all been treated. The house smelled like a Cargill plant.

But there was more work ahead. Fourteen Hefty-bags’ worth. Inside the weighty black sacks sat all the fabric in our house. The entire contents of clothes dressers. Tablecloths. Curtains. Comforters. Rugs. Stuffed animals. Sofa slipcovers. Everything had to be washed to prevent a re-infestation. So at 10 p.m. I drove to “Bubbles,” a 24-hour laundromat.

Under the fluorescent lights, near a bank of clothes dryers, I spied just what I’d expected: a drunk dude in a dew rag. That’s why I’d decided to bring my nunchaku from karate class. The man was half-dozing, half-trying to bum a ride home. I placed the nunchaku in my back pocket to send a message. Something like: “See these nunchaku? I could hurt you, even though they’re made of foam so I won’t hurt myself.”

Next, I made my move towards seven large-capacity washing machines. Each of the shiny, industrial models spins three times more clothes than a domestic washer. This meant liberation from a weekend of continuous laundry duty. I loaded the drums, turned the temperature to hot, and pumped $4.50 into every slot. Then I took a look around the place. “We should get lice more often,” I definitely did not think to myself. But I’ll admit that Bubbles wasn’t the worst place to spend a sexy Friday night. There were video games, Chicklet dispensers, and a change maker that rained down quarters like a Vegas slot machine.

It was 2 a.m. when I folded the last of the clean clothes.  I didn’t get to practice my nunchaku or read the novel I’d brought. The machines finished in a tidy sequence that kept me busy shuttling clothes from washer to dryer to folding table. I’d packed a second set of Hefty bags to hold the clean laundry, and loaded each one to the gunwales.

There were no other Bubbles customers left as I carried the heavy black sacks to my car. It was just the moon, the Dew Rag, and me. He saw I was preparing to leave, and started in on his schtick about a lift home. I kept track of his movement in the storefront reflection. There were still ten bags left to carry when I saw him stand up from his seat. Using my phone’s voice memo application, I faked a call to deter him from getting any closer.  I conversed with my husband, who was sound asleep at home. “Yeah, I’m ready for the tournament tomorrow,” I said, quickening my pace. “Universal 6 starts with a knife-hand block, then a high block, then a reverse punch and a jumping roundhouse kick.” Dew remained standing, but he stayed put. He yelled out an apology for interrupting, which I pretended not to hear. “Ma’am, would you mind calling the rescue squad for me?” As I walked out the automatic double doors, I noticed he was surveying the chips in the vending machine. He was fine, and so was my laundry. They both just needed a bath and some time to sleep it off.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvKa7H6VEkk