A Love Story
October 26, 2006
(in honor of Love Thursday I realize Thursday is almost over, but I wasn’t sure for awhile if this was going to be a tale of love or heartbreak.)
Once upon a time there was a family with a mom, a dad, and seven children. Every day they wore clothing. Sometimes the little girl child would change her outfit several times a day. And the mother would just shake her head and laugh. The laugh of a woman who has never scrubbed clothing by hand on a rocky riverbed or had to hang them on a clothes line in the cold winter air until her fingers were red and numb.
She would toss another load of laundry into the washing machine and another into the dryer. And fa-la-la on her way.
But the washer and dryer began to feel used. They were not appreciated like they once were. They remembered a time when they were brand new and the woman would sing their praises and lovingly tend to them. Now the woman had become accustum to their extra large capacity and stellar drying performance.
And so they plotted, determining that if one of them broke they fa-la-la-ing would come to a swift halt. So one day when the woman had put in a huge load of sopping wet clothes, the dryer made a huge banging noise and stopped working.
The woman was mad. She smacked the dryer a few times. She pushed the on and off button several times to no avail. She opened and closed the door. She sighed at her utter uselessness.
Then she became a bit paranoid. What was that loud bang? The internet had made her paranoid about all things gas related. Her imagination began to run scenarios all of which ended up with her dead family being featured on the 6 o’clock news.
A call to her husband assured her that the gas leak theory was just her over active imagination. It was just the belt breaking he told her. He would fix it when he got home that night.
But lo the dryer was smarter than them. And when the man pulled the dryer out from beneath the wall of built in cabinetry where it lives, he discovered the belt was still in perfect condition.
“Oh what was wrong with the dryer!?!” she wailed.
The man suggested hanging a rope outside so the woman could could hang the clothing outside to dry. Something he called a clothesline. The woman suggested many other things he could do with the rope, but none of them involved her hanging clothing on it outside in the frigid temperatures.
The next morning the woman called the manufacturer of the washing machine and she got to speak to someone in India who could try to schedule a service call for the following week. “Would the service person becoming all the way from India?” the woman wondered, “because we will be walking around naked long before then. And given the cold temperatures there were many sensitive parts I would rather not be frostbitten.”
The woman then began using the phone book. And she called and talked to numerous repair services. They were on vacation, booked up, or not answering their telephone. Finally she reached one repair man who could come THAT VERY DAY! His service call fee, just for driving to her house, was outrageous. The woman contemplated how she would have to go to a laundromat if the dryer wasn’t repaired within a few days. What price are you willing to pay for your sanity?
Turns out the woman was willing to pay a very high price.
And so the man came to the house. Within ten minutes the dryer was working again. The woman vowed never to take her major home appliances for granted again. And showered them with her undying love.
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now THAT is the best Love Thursday entry I’ve seen yet!
I’m so glad this had a happy ending!
October 26th, 2006 at 9:31 pmYou make me laugh. …I think your washer and dryer would appreciate having pet names… Then they’d feel more like family…. Love Miles’ happy face.
October 26th, 2006 at 9:34 pmI know just what you are talking about. I have a repair man that I love and TRUST! He has fixed my washer so many times, always promising to let me know when it came time to throw in the towel and replace it. Sure enough,last month, the time for replacement arrived. I’m almost sorry since I won’t get to see Jerry quite so often. (just kidding)
October 26th, 2006 at 9:40 pmAND THEY ALL LIVED HAPPILY EVER AFTER! HAH!
Happy Love Thursday!
K.
October 26th, 2006 at 9:47 pmHa ha ha….that isn’t the only Love Thursday with a dryer though. For $20, you could have been writing this piece, written by my very best friend: http://ohmygawdreally.blogspot.com/2006/10/loveghetto-style.html
TWENTY BUCKS, CHRIS.
October 26th, 2006 at 10:05 pmKaren
xo
I have a tear in my eye.
October 26th, 2006 at 10:06 pmI love the part where you (sorry, she) opens and closes the door - hoping that’s going to cure everything. Oh if only it were that simple.
October 26th, 2006 at 10:26 pmDon’t leave us in suspense, what was wrong with the dryer??
October 26th, 2006 at 10:54 pmYes, what was wrong with it?? (And yay for working appliances!)
October 26th, 2006 at 11:15 pmAww, man! The dryer faked you out! And now you have rewarded it’s bad behavior with positive reinforcement. Bad dryer! Bad! No fabric softener for you.
October 26th, 2006 at 11:28 pm“Hang a rope…” Ha! Maybe if your hubby wants to wear underwear that’s cold and stiff as cardboard.
I love my major appliances. L-O-V-E.
October 26th, 2006 at 11:30 pmI know that kind of love! What an excellent story!
October 26th, 2006 at 11:36 pmI don’t blame you one bit. Hang it outside?? In this cold wind?? H.E.L.L. NO! Next time go to repairclinic.com, it’s saved us tons of money on several occasions. But then again, if your husband is able to keep fixing that same dryer himself for the next thirty years, you may never get a new one and it may end up looking like Sassy’s ‘ghetto model’ so it’s your call….
October 27th, 2006 at 12:23 amThis is HILARIOUS. Once I drove all the way to Canada to do laundry when my dryer was broken. Well, I was going there anyways, but it was a good thing I was. (Who took the picture?)
October 27th, 2006 at 12:47 amgreat love thursday story, Chris!
October 27th, 2006 at 12:48 amNow, that’s real life love! Happy Love Thursday
October 27th, 2006 at 3:28 amI am going to give my appliances a quick dust and polish, thank you for reminding us all how we need show our love for our major appliances.
October 27th, 2006 at 5:24 amThat was a good story.
October 27th, 2006 at 6:36 amI like the way you opened and closed the door to see uf it would work. I do that to my fridge to see if any dinner will appear just by my opening and closing of the door.
Did you know that if you want service on your old machine, it will be two weeks before they can get there, but if you buy a new one? They can be there the next day. I know this because I got a new washer yesterday. I was that desperate.
October 27th, 2006 at 6:58 amWhen you hang clothes outside (which I’ve tried to do many a time), they get bird poops in the spring and summer, nesting spiders trying to find a hibernation spot in the fall (shudder), and frozen-stiff clothes that aren’t really dry in the winter.
October 27th, 2006 at 7:10 amI pink puffy heart my washer and dryer. If I weren’t already married, I would marry them (would that be polygamy?) and have their children and start my own laundromat. I am so glad that this story had a happy ending. Always give love to the appliances!
October 27th, 2006 at 7:13 amYou freakin’ crack me up, Chris. Thanks for the giggle. I needed that.
October 27th, 2006 at 7:44 amGreat story! I remember when I thought my washer had broken down, oh the panic that coursed through my veins! It turned out to be just a blown fuse, thank God.
October 27th, 2006 at 8:41 amYAY! I once have paid large sums of money to have the washing machine fixed. After going a week without it. So worth it.
October 27th, 2006 at 8:48 am[...] Ode to a dryer [...]
October 27th, 2006 at 11:08 amThere are some things I cannot live without. My washer, dryer and dishwasher are certainly right up there.
October 27th, 2006 at 11:19 amYou’re the Best!
I’m going to kiss my dryer now!
Happy Love Thursday! On Friday..
October 27th, 2006 at 2:55 pmwe should all bow down to our dryers and claim our unworthyness
October 27th, 2006 at 4:19 pmHave you ever heard the story of the beautiful young woman whose dryer ate her favorite blanket and shredded it to pieces?
No?
It’s a good one and didn’t work out nearly as lovely as yours did in the end.
October 27th, 2006 at 4:42 pmHappy belated Love Thursday
I completely sympathize. My dryer went out during the great lice scare of ‘96, LOL, when I put everything from my children’s rooms in the dryer on high until the whole thing quit. ARGH!
And, on behalf of the internet, I apologize for freaking you out.
October 27th, 2006 at 9:53 pmGreat story. Along with several of your other readers I always try opening and shutting things, or turning them on and off again, to see if it works now.
You know, there are not very many things which make me nod and say to myself “Ahhh, the great cultural divide of the Aussies vs Northern Hemisphere dwellers”. But washing is one of them. I can not imagine not line drying my clothes. I might finish things off in the dryer in winter, or finish the towells in it in summer to make them fluffy. But 99% of my washing dries out on the line. I think half my clothes have little labels on them saying ‘do not tumble dry’ and it’s never worried me.
I found it really weird when visiting the outlaws (hubby’s family) in Canada and they put all their clothes in the dryer. Surely that costs a fortune in elecricity! Doesn’t it fade all your clothes? And wear them out faster? And give everything static cling?
October 30th, 2006 at 1:37 amJust had to de-lurk. Your story rocks (as in the storytelling rocks, not the actual it happened to you rocks). We had a similar breakdown with our washer this summer except the call to the husband involved lots of non-family-friendly (and even non-sailor-friendly) curse words and threats of throwing said machine at the our 7th story window (as if I could actually lift the washer a single centimeter). I’m glad everything worked out with your dryer because I know how I felt when I thought I couldn’t wash my favorite black shirts and there’s only 2 of us. Sorry for my parenthesisitis!
October 30th, 2006 at 8:30 pmThanks for making me laugh! I think I’ll go kiss our washer and dryer now.
We had the motor die on our 2 year old washer, and after fighting with GE, my husband got the price of a new one knocked down to only $50 and free shipping. Luckily, my mother-in-law loves to clean or something, because she voluntarily took a gazillion clothes and washed them at her house for me until we could get it fixed. It was a nightmare!
November 13th, 2006 at 8:41 amcanada Vacation Winter…
This sounds pretty good….
July 10th, 2007 at 4:02 pm