Day 4: Journal from the Edge of Survival (COVID-19 Shelter-in-place Diary)

 

Charlie Does Laundry

This is not new, or survival-related. Charlie does a lot of the laundry. He’s a house-chore hero on a regular basis.

This time, though, as the dryer ran, there was a click-tick….clang clang clang… click tick.

Charlie rose from the sofa and stormed towards the laundry room.

“JESUS CHRIST!!!”

I decided to investigate his newfound religion. I stepped in to the rear door of the laundry room in time to be hit in the face with a flying wet V-necked undershirt (yes I married my grandpa, shut up).

After extricating myself from the damp laundry I saw him pulling clothes from the dryer and tossing them around the room, grunting and swearing with each fling. An occasional pirate-imitating “AARGH!” would punctuate the string of obscenities.

Normally this behavior might incite a little worry about one’s emotional stability, but I have done my fair share of ranting at appliances and tech which have baffled me in their stubborn refusal to work the way I insist they should. Anyone who is rebooting their modem for the third time that day or who’s TV speakers refuse to make sound or who’s dishwasher won’t drain no matter how many times you clean the trap knows exactly what I’m talking about. So I took Charlie’s rage in stride. The dryer likely deserved it.

“What’s wrong?” I asked as he scooped something out of the bottom of the dryer and slammed it on top of the machine, as if punishing both the offending dryer-intruder and the dryer at the same time.

“COINS!!!” He nearly screamed the word like a victorian woman who has just spotted a mouse turd in her soup.

My lips twitched in a spasm of not-quite-self-control. I managed to erase the emerging mirth from my face and put on a more appropriate look of deep concern.

“Coins?” I asked, wondering how these useless discs had managed to raise so much ire.

He started slamming the laundry back into the machine. “I SEARCHED EVERY POCKET! EVERY (slam) SINGLE (slam) POCKET! I KNOW THERE WERE NO COINS ANYWHERE!”

Twitch. While I sympathized with his not-at-all irrational rage at an inanimate object (they all deserve it), the mirth was winning.

He stood up. “This happens EVERY SINGLE TIME! I SEARCH EVERY POCKET! I KNOW THERE ARE NO COINS IN THERE!”

He paused a moment, then flung his arms towards this dryer.

“THIS DRYER IS PRODUCING COINS!”

I bit the inside of my cheeks hard. Laughing, at this point, could result in either the destruction of the dryer or our marriage. Maybe both.

The words, though. Damn. Those words that hide in our throats and threaten to emerge when there is funny to be found in the world… those words forced their way out of my mouth before I could stifle them. It wasn’t me, I swear it. The words would be said and I could not stop them.

“I guess we don’t need to worry about our stock portfolio, then. You just need to do more laundry.”

I almost gasped in horror at myself. I looked at him, steeling myself in case his eyes exploded out of their sockets and all that pirate grunting and swearing turned itself onto me.

Then…

Twitch. His own lips spasmed. I could see the war between the funny and the rage taking place in his face.

Twitch, my lips answered. We gauged each other for a moment, my fear vs his rage, my emerging giggle vs his. What would win?

We both started laughing so hard tears sprang to our eyes, gasping and doubling over as each new volley erupted.

The joke itself didn’t deserve that much laughing, but I think it just took that much of it to fully dispel the dryer/coin rage. We wiped our eyes, hiccuping as the last of the laughter waxed and waned, ebbed and flowed, and carried us back to the TV room to finish watching “The Tiger King” on Netflix.

And we survived another day.