The laundromat

I'm in a laundromat. When I was 9 years old, I always went to a laundromat - I lived in an old apartment, how else was I supposed to wash my clothes? It was an occasion nevertheless; we went, (usually in the evening, when the sky was light enough so that you could see in the distance if you squinted, but dark so that people's faces were obscured save for the orange glow on half of their skin - or at least that's how I remember it) loading into the car the plastic white and blue baskets filled with white socks turned brown on the soles and sweaters camouflaged in thin dog hairs. The smell is the same. The smell of lavender fabric softener that was strangely far from lavender-smelling, lemon-scented floor cleaner, and a faint tinny smell, like sterling silver or metal machinery. I think of the different ways different people make decisions. Some are calculated, some logical, some prepare and deliberate so intensely that the actual deciding of the matter is no longer important, or even necessary. In their fervour and anxiety, they forget the actual weight that their decision held in the first place. I remember sitting on the entirely incommodious bench, swinging my legs and watching whatever was on the small television set suspended above my head. Sometimes it was good - like a music video on MTV, or it was not so good, like a bizarre TV show I'd never heard of, or even worse - the news. We would all sit waiting, painfully (for me, at least), disinterestedly waiting. I, feeling especially blasé, would walk up and down the aisles and observe people busying themselves with their laundry. An older woman, but not that old, folding a yellow pastel t shirt dejectedly. A young man, probably mid-twenties, tossing his wet, dark towels into the dryer. Two women, chattering away, like birds, about some trivial matter or other, some she-did-what-but-get-this-he-said-that nonsense, while they swiftly fold their delicates. Mostly, I remember the laundromat in close-ups and long shots only - the rows upon rows of washing and drying machines, the ridges on a loonie, the small TV sitting crudely in the ceiling, like a half-hearted smile; the dryer lint and the spotless silver interior of the washing machine.

Now I think, a synonym for clean is laundered.

I clumsily slide a few quarters into one of the washing machine coin slots. I don't have any clothes to wash.

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.