It’s not that we can’t do laundry at our apartment, it’s that we choose not to. . . and we choose not to because it costs $1.25 to stuff three pairs of jeans into a washer that decides to chew them up and spit out something resembling a wad of tangled threads. SO every couple weeks we load up our bags and head to the laundry mat. We are the only white people, and we stand out, mostly because we don’t have any kids. There are kids everywhere.
This week I was in a particularly bad mood about going to the laundry mat. I had a lot of home work to do and hated carting dirty clothes from the house to the car to the laundry mat and then back agian. It didn’t help that once we got there I accidently put all the whites in with the colors and the machine wouldn’t turn off until the cylce was done. I was pissed. I sat down and picked up my Human Rights Reader, determined to plow through my reading. Immediately I was greeted by a young boy.
“Can I show you my dance moves?”
I’m not going to lie, I was a little annoyed. I thought, “Seriously kid? I have a lot to do. I have to read the rest of this book before tomorrow, and you wanna show me some silly dance moves?” Somehow though, I managed to shut up the grouch that was eeking to come out, in time to say, “Sure, show me what you got.”
While bee-bopping his own rhythm he let out an incredible routine of break dancing, moonwalking, and many variations of the robot which I have never seen before. The routine ended with his shoe flying across the room and getting wedged underneath a giant washer. He looked embarrassed. “That part. . . wasn’t supposed to happen,” he said, as he crawled underneath the table to retrieve his shoe.
“You know,” I whispered, “You could just make it part of your dance. Just pretend like you meant that to happen. . . Pretend like you wanted your shoe to go flying. The crowd will go wild if they think you did it on purpose.” I could see he was excited about this possibility and for the next 15 minutes he practiced intentionally flinging his shoe off. It was great.
“How old are you?” I asked him, after he sat down to rest.
“Seven, and I can dance better than my 16 year old cousin.”
“I beleive it. You’re pretty good.”
“I know.”
He looked at me suspiciously, as I went back to reading my text.
“How old are you?”
“I’m 24. “
“What are you reading?
“My school books.”
“Wow, you’re STILL in school? I would hope you’d be done by now.”
I couldn’t help but laugh. We continued talking and he told me about his family, introduced me to his momma and told me about how he got into dancing. He said it all started when he was two. Just as he was about to launch into that story his momma persuaded him to come finish his own homework, and I returned to mine.
Honestly though, I wasn’t thinking about homework. I was thinking about community. Community has been harder to establish since moving to California, then I originally thought it would. I assumed I would immediately have community at school, that’d I’d find it at a church, or maybe even in our apartment complex. Oddly though I have found a sense of community at the laundry mat, playing yahtzee with different kids as we fold clothes and watching incredible dance routines by a seven year old boy who should be doing his homework. I didn’t pick this community out or envision being a part of a community like this. In fact I have been annoyed that I have to use the laundry mat. But isn’t that so often the case? The thing that I’ve been needing and craving the is coming out of the very thing I have been complaining about.
It seems to me that going to the laundry mat was meant to be – you had a great encounter with the young dancer, it brought you to a happy place for a while, and you laughed. Sounds pretty good.
I love it!!