The Only Rule

I used to live in a house that had no washer and dryer. We were also nowhere near a laundromat. And I didn't have a car. As you can imagine, this made doing laundry difficult. Easier than borrowing someone's car and doing my laundry was buying a package of panties every time I went to Walmart. And so it was that I amassed a collection of 52 pairs of panties and extended my laundry cycle to about six or seven weeks.

Since I did laundry so infrequently, I could afford the nice Tide liquid laundry detergent. I could afford a giant economy-size tub of Tide liquid laundry detergent. I loved the smell of liquid laundry detergent.

One day when I desperately needed to do laundry, I called Captain Fabuloso to ask to borrow his car. I went to his workplace to pick up his keys and we had our traditional review of The Rule. As he handed me his keys, he said, "What's the one rule for driving my car?" I said, "No crashing."

I drove back to my house, threw my clothes hamper and detergent in the back seat, and left for the laundromat. I had four hours before I had to go to work. I filled several of the machines with all my clothes, read a book for thirty minutes, transferred the clothing from the washers to the dryers, read a book for an hour, took all the clothes out of the dryers and folded everything. It was perfect. My laundry was done and it smelled divine. I loaded it and the giant tub of liquid laundry detergent back into the back seat of Captain Fabuloso's car and realized that I still had about an hour before I had to return his car and go to work. I decided I'd go and run some errands that I'm never able to do because I don't have a car.

I went to Linens 'N Things. (Why did it close down while I was on my mission? Why?) I took my time, dawdled, and finally went back to the car to drive back to return it to Captain Fabuloso. I got into the car. My laundry smelled divine. I loved the smell of Tide liquid laundry detergent. It was so fresh, so clean, so... so... powerful. So very overwhelmingly powerful! I turned around to look at my fresh, clean, folded laundry in the back seat and found it bathing in a sea of liquid laundry detergent. I had forgotten to screw the cap back on my tub when I had finished laundry, and on the drive to Linens 'N Things, it had spilled all over my laundry and all over the back seat of Captain Fabuloso's car.

I was supposed to be at work in twenty minutes. I called in and said that I needed to take the day off due to a personal emergency. I spent the next four hours redoing all my laundry and trying to get all the soap out of the back seat of Captain Fabuloso's car.

When I returned his keys to him, I said, "Captain Fabuloso... you know that one rule that you have about your car?"

He got very nervous. "Yes...?"

"Well, I didn't break it. I didn't crash your car. But... I did spill liquid laundry all over the back seat of your car. But I cleaned it up. And the good news is that now your car smells like liquid laundry detergent, which smells really good!"

Any time I wanted to borrow his car after that, there was no longer one rule, but three:

1) No crashing.

2) No spilling liquid laundry in the back seat of the car.

3) No more giving reasons to make new rules.

(This post inspired by Daltongirl's post.)