I’ll happily spend money on lunch dates with friends,
fragrant candles, pretty journals, and anything for my granddaughters. I think
that makes me quite normal. Just don’t ask me to buy appliances. I don’t mind
if the ones I have are old and outdated as long as they work. But lately, many
of them haven’t.
In the past
nine months, I’ve had to replace an iron (which I think belonged to my sister,
Kay), a gas grill, coffee pot, toaster, refrigerator, washer and dryer. Maybe that’s
normal, too.
While each
has a story of its own, let’s focus on the dryer. It was given to my daughter,
Elise, when the owner moved to an appliance-furnished apartment. She and her
three roommates used it for a year and when she moved, she gave it to us. It
worked for a couple more years, gradually declining until it operated on only
one cycle. At that point, last August, I bought a new one.
An hour
after the delivery men left, my youngest daughter, Victoria, came in from the
garage and asked, “Where’s our dryer?”
“Don’t talk
to me about it. I finally gave in and bought a new one. They took the old one
away.”
“So where’s
the clothes that were in the old one? I’m scheduled to work in an hour. My
uniform’s in the dryer.”
My husband
called the store to track down our dryer and the last load of clothes it had
dried. Since the delivery men were in a nearby neighborhood, he met up with
them to recover Victoria’s clothes, and made it home in time for her shift at
Sicily’s.
Always
looking for validation that I’m normal, I said, “The men must have assured you
that this happens all the time.”
“On the
contrary,” Michael said, “They said this was the first time it has ever
happened to them.”
I guess
author Patsy Clairmont was right when she wrote, “Normal is just a setting on
your dryer.”
I hope this
dryer lasts for many years. So far, so good. It even plays a little tune when
the clothes is ready. If my stove did that, maybe I’d cook more often.
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