In pursuit of stories (and clean clothes)

Several years ago, I decided my life would be lived in pursuit of stories. Living in Mexico has certainly added to my repository. Almost any event, no matter how small, can be turned into a story.

Laundry is one of the most mundane duties in the US. Here in Mexico, though, nothing is mundane. Unless you are one of the privileged few in possession of a washer, you are stuck taking your laundry to the tintoreria, a full-service laundry mat. Self-service laundry mats do not exist here. While I have enjoyed picking up laundry that is magically ironed and folded, the erratic hours of the tintorerias make their full service much more exhausting than a self-service laundry mat.

I have the habit of waiting until the last possible minute to do laundry. While this worked fine when I could run downstairs to the dorm laundry machines any time of the day or night, it has proven inconvenient when the tintorerias are open only three days a week, from 4:30 to 6:30, and only then if nothing else is going on in the owners' lives. Last week my roommate and I, in need of clean clothes, arrived at the tintoreria only a few minutes after it had closed. The doors had been pulled down, blocking the "Tintoreria" sign, but we pounded as hard as we could anyway. When an old man finally opened the door, we held our our bags of dirty clothes and begged him to take them for us. He shook his head, but we continued to beg. We didn't see any possible reason he had for refusing our clothes. Until, that is, we peered through the doorway and found that we were at the wrong place. Instead of being at the laundry mat, we were next door to it, at an ordinary family's house, begging an ordinary old man to wash our dirty laundry.

Now I just pay careful attention to the laundry mat's constantly changing hours and try to plan my life around my laundry schedule.