I was thinking about dryers the other day. They are marvelous inventions. I might be one of the few people in the world that doesn't enjoy the feeling or the scent of laundry fresh off of the line. Seriously, people are disillusioned when they say they love hanging clothes outside. Who wants to wrap a life size piece of sandpaper around their naked body when they come out of the shower? And furthermore, I don't want my clothes to smell like nature either. So for the life of me, I don't get these clothes line people.
So back to the dryer. (what sane people use) I really love that machine! But given the experiences I have had with dryers, one would think I despise them. Every once in awhile our dryer tends to die on us. It stops heating up, we get it repaired, it works, and then it stops heating up again. So far, the cycle continues every few years or so. I really can't complain about its fickle nature. Our dryer is elderly. It has been a part of our family since we became a family. When it is working, however, it eats stuff (like socks and spare change). Or it melts stuff, (like crayons and Chapstick). I've dug things outta that drum that should never have even made it past the threshold of the laundry room. The latest item being hundreds, no wait, thousands of air soft pellets. What a joyous day that was!!!!
As a kid, my Mom's dryer took the life of my pet hamster, Pancake. Prior to the incident, Pancake went MIA for about a week. Within that week, her travels took her from the top of our tri-level house to the bottom of our tri-level house. Her final destination was the laundry room. I'm guessing she was all over that washer and dryer. Judging by the teeth marks in the knobs, she was. After gnawing down the rubber encased knobs to the nubbins, Pancake somehow made her way into the inner workings of the dryer. It would be there that she would literally have the final ride of her life. She was found during a routine laundry folding session. It was a sad day. (Sorta, she WAS just a hamster...)
Perhaps, the most momentous day of my life involving a dryer had to be the day my sister and I decided to play hide and seek. It was my turn to hide. What better place to hide than in the dryer, right? So, in I went. Deep within the walls of the machine, I could hear my sister. I remember thinking two things. #1 "gee it's taking her a long time to find me" and #2 "it doesn't sound like she is 'seeking' me at all." Shortly after I had this conversation with myself, the dryer door flew open. Relieved that she found me, I leaned forward to make my way out. Instead of seeing my sister ready to embrace me with loving arms, I felt a pair of jeans hit my face. The door slammed shut and the dryer rumbled to a start. There I was, tumbling around in the dryer with my sister's jeans. I can tell you that going around in the dryer isn't all it's cracked up to be. My mom's dryer had these little fins that jutted out of the dryer walls every 12 inches or so. So each time I made a revolution, some part of me rammed into one of those hard fins. About 4-5 turns into it and my sister miraculously "found" and "rescued" me. I put that in quotes because I think she knew I was in there from the second I slammed the dryer door shut. Tell me, who wouldn't hear the familiar slam of the dryer door while playing hide and seek and NOT know where the person was hiding?!?! (Not to mention, I am 99% sure those jeans weren't even wet.)
I honestly don't know if I screamed or yelled or if I did anything while I was in that dryer. I can't even remember what happened once I got out. I blame my memory deficit on the fact that I took a spin in a gas dryer. If you ask my sister, she recalls this day much differently than I do. I just know that I happen to be lucky enough to live to tell the tale.
Given all these negatives, I still heart dryers. They are wonder machines that make clothes warm and soft. They can't help destroying the items that get in the way of their mission. It's not the dryer's fault that a pair of cargo pants with pockets filled to the brim with stickers, gum and snickers bars has been inadvertently been loaded into it. It's there for one purpose and when it is in proper working order, it serves its purpose like no other.
Oh! And do you know who happened to discover Pancake's lifeless body and then proceed to pull her out of the dryer thinking it was a stuffed animal? My sister.
:D (hehehe)
I guess you could say she has lots of dryer stories, too.
