Laundry tales

So remember how I’m like the king of awkward moments? Yep. The following is another similar embarrassing incident that will forever be etched in my wretched mind.

Rewind to a few years ago. Circa 2007. I was a lowly graduate student in New York City. Barely making ends meet. Living paycheck to paycheck. Had no more than $35 in my checking account. And the cardinal rule of graduate school is that you do not do laundry until absolutely necessary. And by absolute necessary I mean that until you completely run out of clean underwear. It was one such night. I had a job interview the next morning. And no clean clothes. At 11 in the night, I decide that it would be a good time to do laundry. So I grab my hamper and head down to the basement, drop it in the washer, come back in 30 minutes to put them in the dryer. As I’m dumping my soggy clothes into the dryer, through the corner of my eye I notice my neighbor starting her washer cycle. About half an hour later, I’m back in the basement to pick up my clothes. Neighbor lady is waiting for me to empty the lone dryer (it was a pre-war, rent-controlled building and cheapass landlord so 40 apartments had to share 2 washers and 1 dryer) so she can start her dryer cycle. And as luck would have it, my clothes aren’t completely dry. I mutter the classiest of swear words as I prepare to kick off another dryer cycle. Neighbor lady goes all sigh-ey and complains about how she had an early morning meeting and it was getting late. And the good samaritan that I am, I offer her to share the dryer with me. Lady jumps at the opportunity to save an hour of her time, drops her clothes with mine and leaves.

About half an hour later, we meet again in the basement. We separate our clothes and go our own ways. Later, when I’m folding my own clothes, I see that she left a bra behind in my pile. Now I could either trash it and let it be at that. But then I do know that bras don’t come cheap. But I really don’t want to be the one handing it over to her. Because, well, that would just be awkward. So what do I do? I decide to leave it on her door knob, ring the bell and vanish the fuck out of there before she opens the door. Pleased at my genius plan, I tiptoe over to her apartment (very conveniently, she happened to live right next door), and am about to leave the bra on the doorknob. And before I could get to doing that, her door opens, and neighbor girl stares at me with a judgey look in her eyes and her bra in my hand. Awkward with a capital A. Avoiding all eye contact, I hand over the goods and turn around and close the door to my apartment.

I avoided her like the plague for the remaining 6 months I lived in that building.