Laundry Girl Episode 1

In a world where laundromats lie empty along forgotten streets, neon lights weakly flashing "New Machines Available;" where washing clothes is a chore, not a pleasure; where stains are so prevalent you can't tell what the original color was; one girl is making a difference.

The sun is setting as a lone figure enters the laundromat "Loads of Fun," basket of laundry tucked under one arm. Fluorescent lights flicker on to illuminate walls of deserted washers and driers. The girl sighs and sets her basket on the floor next to the nearest vacant seat. Her name is Izzy, and she is one of the few laundromat patrons left in the world. Izzy glances around the obviously-empty room again before disappearing between two of the large washers.

Seconds later, a new girl emerges. She is wearing similar clothes to Izzy, but there is a large "LG" emblazoned on her shirt and a bed-sheet tied around her neck to act as a cape. This is Laundry Girl: champion of justice and defender of clean clothes everywhere.

Immediately, Laundry Girl springs into action! From a hidden pocket in her jeans, she pulls out a handful of quarters, assumes a pose meant to concentrate all her abilities into the throw, and...

With expert marksmanship, Laundry Girl flings the quarters through the air directly at one of the washing machines!

They hit their mark one after another, each quarter clinking its way into the coin slot of the machine. Before you could blink, Laundry Girl loads all her darks into the washer and deftly adjusts all settings: medium-sized load, cold water.

As the machine spins into life, Laundry Girl can relax; her work is done, for now. She takes a seat, pulls out a book and settles in for a good read. But seconds later the door is thrown open and a crazed man bursts into the laundromat.

It's esteemed writer/director M. Night Shyamallama !!! What an unexpected twist.

In an even more disturbing and unexpected twist, Shyamallama rips off his pants and holds them high in the air. For some reason, they're covered in what appear to be grass stains. A fact which is causing an extreme level of discomfort for Shyamallama.

"MY PANTS ARE TRYING TO KILL ME!" Shyamallama screams in Laundry Girl's face.

"... Just mix together some baking soda and vinegar and rub it on the back; the stains will come right out," Laundry Girls suggests.

"You don't understand, I'm M. Night Shyamallama. Just look at my shirt! And my PANTS!"

Laundry Girl takes a second to register the strangers identity before exclaiming, "you were the one who butchered my favorite TV series!"

She springs out of her chair and rushes at the monstrous filmmaker, preparing to knock him to kingdom come. M. Night Shyamallama adopts a "fighting pose" of his own, ready for the attack.

But suddenly a cloaked figure appears between the two combatants, stopping them in their tracks.

"Hello, would either of you be able to tell me what year this is? I'm blind, you see, so I can't tell for myself..." the figure asks.

"Two-thousand tw-" Laundry Girl begins to tell him, but M. Night Shyamallama cuts her off.

The blind man man awkwardly backs away saying, "I'm gonna go..." while Laundry Girl picks herself up. Unseen by Shyamallama; however, she reaches into her pocket and pulls out a few quarters, launching them at Shyamallama's face as she rises.

M. Night Shyamallama falls to the floor apparently seriously injured, only to jump back up as if nothing had happened.

"Actually, I've been dead all this time, so that was pointless," he scoffs before hitting Laundry Girl with his best right jab.

Laundry Girl is thrown into the laundry-cart bay, causing an enormous, metallic racket. While Shyamallama gloats about the hit, Laundry Girl takes the chance to meditate. She turns inward, searching for the best way to defeat her enemy.

Like most heroes, Laundry Girl has a spirit animal to aide her in troubling situations. Hers is a squirrel; a laundry squirrel to be precise.

"Sweep the leg," Laundry Squirrel tells her.

"No, no. That's been copyrighted I think," Laundry Girl thinks, "and besides, that's the Cobra Kai; I'm the good guy!"

"Well why don't you just you that ironing board over there?" Laundry Squirrel offers. He starts getting really excited about his idea (as squirrels do) and enters his hyperactive-squirrel mode.

It's not much use trying to reason with Laundry Squirrel when he gets like this, so Laundry Girl emerges from her meditation and disentangles herself from the mess of carts. She spots the ironing board on the wall a few feet from her and makes a move towards it.

"You're alive?!?" M. Night Shyamallama shouts incredulously, "But you were lying still for, like, a minute!"

Laundry Girl just shoots him a disgusted look and smashes the glass covering the ironing board. She extracts the new weapon and turns to face Shyamallama, saying,

"It's time for the rinse cycle, and you're all out of quarters."

Laundry Girl sprints at M. Night Shyamallama, drawing back the board to hit him. And she does. The ironing board collides with his skull so hard that he instantly regrets ever making that horrid movie and soars across the length of the laundromat to smash into a washer at the end.

He lies on the floor, completely knocked out by the power of Laundry Girl's attack. As his eyes spin dizzying circles, something peers down at him through the door of the machine.

Its the fabled "Lady in the Washer!" She wrenches the door open, leans out, and grabs M. Night Shyamallama, retreating into the washing machine with the villain in tow.

After that, there is only silence marked by the occasional drip of water on the linoleum floor. M. Night Shyamallama is gone for good.

Laundry Girl jumps into the air pumping her fists.

"I did it! I finally rid the world of that menace!" she celebrates. The washer she was using buzzes and whirs to a stop. The whole encounter with Shyamallama had taken less than the time of a wash cycle.

Triumphantly, Laundry Girl gathers up her wet clothes and hauls them over to the nearest dryer. After loading the laundry, she claps her hands together and turns around to survey the laundromat.

Everything is in ruins. The cart-well is full of bits of twisted metal all warped together; five or six washing machines are busted up, the doors hanging ajar; the water leaking out of the Lady in the Washer's machine is spreading across the floor; and M. Night Shyamallama's pants are still on the ground next to the door.

With an air of dignity, Laundry Girl starts back towards her chair and bends down to pick it up. But before she can, she slips in the pool of water and falls flat on her face.

---

The next day, Izzy goes to the doctor to find out what happened to her ankle. The doctor examines it for a second, taps on a couple of bones, and exclaims,

"What a twist!"

The Laundry Girl Pt. 2

One of the greatest experiences of my life was being in a play in the spring of 2012. It was a large cast (like 17 people) so each person didn't get much time on-stage, but the fact that there were so many people made it even better. Surprisingly, I actually knew 3 people going in to the play

BUT there was one girl whom I was apparently supposed to know. While I was talking to Jack and Kier one day, I discovered that they had a friend in a play. And it was the SAME PLAY. Go figure!

I met Ashley in the Math Lab. It was one of those days when you just bake cookies and bring them in to work hoping that maybe someone will be audacious enough to ask for one and then also appreciate my baking enough to become my friend. You know, one of those days.

Best first impression ever? I think so. You see, I make these lovely things that one of my friends dubbed "crack-cocaine cookies" because of their incredible addictive qualities. And truly, several of my friends back home are legitimately addicted! Sometimes I think they only want me home so that I can make cookies for them.

Anyway, Ashley thoroughly enjoyed a cookie (or three) before she and Jack and Kier headed off to watch Avatar or some equally awesome nonsense. Needless to say, I was pretty impressed.

After that, we were pretty much instantly friends, and then suddenly awesome friends. We chatted a lot during rehearsals and I baked her a Skyrim-themed cake for her birthday. It didn't take long at all before I realized something extraordinary.

In her scene, Ashley enters with a laundry basket and proceeds to do laundry.

Yes, there was a GIRL doing LAUNDRY. A Laundry Girl.

Oh my God. I was in the presence of one of the most influential figures of my lifetime several times a week. There was no one I could tell except Mushel, so I began the extended process of making him extremely jealous that I had met the girl of his dreams.

As time went on and we hung out more and more, I began to understand the true epicness of my situation.

Ashley loves Avatar, as I do. She is into video games (SKYRIM) and nerdy books (aSoIaF). She still plays Pokemon, albeit on an emulator and with a 5000% frame rate. She is a big anime fan, and more importantly and specifically, a Naruto fan.

These are all things one might expect an average person to do though. The scariest thing I learned about Ashley was that she will sometimes use the word "cuso" as an expletive. Sounds weird, but it's the biggest revelation I've ever experienced.

See, Mushel and I are mocked as the two fools of the group who go around screaming "SI" and "CUSOOOOO" at each other, an odd sort of behavior that I never imagined would pop up in anyone else's life naturally.

You can imagine my elation when I mentioned this to Ashley and discovered that she was like me. It was like the world was just toying with me, trying to see just how much awesome relevant stuff it could cram into one person before she exploded in a million pieces of pure amazingness.

I'm almost frightened to see how far these Laundry Girl traits go. It's already better than I could possibly imagine, maybe it'll just turn out that the Laundry Girl was ME THE WHOLE TIME.

No, get out of here you M. Night Shyamalan, no one wants you and your Pandemic ways.

So now Ashley and I are best of friends. At first I didn't tell her anything about any of this, but now she is fully aware of her destiny as Laundry Girl. I think she has come to terms with it quite well, and I think it's really gonna open a lot of doors for her. It'll probably go something like this...

Oh, are you applying to be a detergent engineer at our prestigious company? Well, you know we require a 5 year background in being a badass.

I see, well that shouldn't be a problem because I'M LAUNDRY GIRL!!!

Hm, you want to fly this fabric-softener-powered plane effectively saving a whole bunch of people and becoming a hero? Well, I don't think you have the proper qualifications for that.

Yeah actually I think I do because I'm LAUNDRY GIRL!!!

Excuse me, I'm a giant rolling boulder of lint and I'm going to crush you beneath my navy, hairball girth. Don't even try to escape because I will cling to ANYTHING.

No I think I'll just pull out my trusty bullwhip of crazy rad-ness and completely deny your efforts.
Do you know why?
I'll tell you.
Because...

I'M LAUNDRY GIIIIIIIIIIIIRL!!!!!

Yup, life should be pretty great for you from now on, Ashley. Congratulations!

Good luck to you Laundry Girl, I know you're going to treat your new title with the dignity it deserves. I'm so proud to call you my friend, thanks for confirming that even the most ridiculous and far-fetched dreams do come true!

The Laundry Girl Pt. 1

Some colleges boast impressive stats about their sports teams or about the average GPA of their student body. Not here. Here, the ratio of girls to boys has sunk so low that it has broken through the barrier of potentially-embarrassing facts and become something to celebrate. There are so few girls here that you have zero chance of meeting one; and it's all anyone can do to brag about it.

Nonetheless, this is where I go to college. Details on how I made my choice are sketchy, but it's best not to dwell on the past. During my freshman year, I was feeling the effects of pure testosterone seeping through the dorm-room walls pretty badly. I lost most of the contact with my "feminine side" and subsided into constant, life-sucking gaming online with my friends. We stayed in touch only because of Skype and Left 4 Dead.

As cliche as it is, I became consumed with the virtual world and lost all the opportunities to get out there and experience college life. Like the GIRLS, there was little enough chance of me meeting a girl had I been trying to find one, but when the only time I spent outside my dorm room was transitioning between classes, my odds dropped to absolute zero.

That was how winter break found me: a quiet, lonely shut-in who would do anything to meet girls except try any harder than going to class every day. It was also how my friends found me when a group of them arrived to bring me home for winter break.

The drive between here and home is only 6 and a half hours (5 if you ignore stops and speed limits) so it wasn't really asking TOO much of my friends to come get me. They made it to me sometime in the late afternoon/evening and we immediately loaded up the car and set out for home. But as fate would have it, we were delayed in the form of a mysterious check engine light and the increasing darkness and snowfall. Full of resentment and Mt. Dew, we turned back.

Fitting two people in a dorm room is miserable. Fitting those two plus another three is just obscene. With two lofted beds, one un-pull-out-able futon, and like 10 square feet of open floor space, things were obviously uncomfortable. I honestly don't understand how my friends put up with it, but seeing as I had one of the beds, I was alright.

And because my bed was lofted, I had the perfect chance to employ my magnificent creeper skills. If you pay attention to my other writing, you'll know I have a super power, so it's pretty easy for me to be the first one awake in the morning when I want to be. Which, in turn makes it super easy for me to be peering ominously over the side of my bed when my floor-hugging friends first opened their eyes.

Etim was my first victim. I imagine it was more than unnerving to arise from happy dreamland only to find yourself staring into a pair of soulless eyes glaring at you from beneath a menacing jew-fro.

After the appropriate inappropriate words were tossed around, we all headed to breakfast and noted the lack of girls in the dining hall. Then we packed up the car noting the lack of girls walking around outside. Then we emptied the vending machines of pop because I had a bajillion unused dining dollars that were going to expire, all the while noting the lack of girls doing the same thing.

Finally, just as we were pulling out of the parking lot, it happened.

Mushel was the one to point her out, and it was love at first sight. There was a girl, presumably the only girl within a thousand miles, in the laundry room.

It explained EVERYTHING. We had seen no girls around because they were all doing laundry! Not that anyone cared about any other girls anywhere because holy shit: A GIRL.

For some reason, we were still moving, it's like some law of traffic forced us into perpetual motion. So, against all of our greater judgement, we left. Mushel and I kept screaming "Si" and "CUSOOOOO" at each other until we were hoarse, just like always. But something new came up immediately and lingered like only the smell of dirty socks can.

"Laundry Girl"

"LAUNDRY GIRL"

We bellowed it to the heavens, praising the glory of the universe to provide us with such a gift. For nigh on 5 hours straight, we talked about Laundry Girl. We joked about Laundry Girl. We speculated on what Laundry Girl was doing now, whether she had finished her laundry or not, whether she had gone to lunch beforehand or waited until she had finished all her laundry.

We examined every intimate, menial detail of this poor, unsuspecting girl's life. We took her very existence and made it one of the most integral inside jokes our group has ever come up with.

Laundry Girl was born not with a fizzle but with a bang.

History became myth. Myth became legend. And for 3 and a quarter years, Laundry Girl passed by her life without knowing her true calling.

But in the spring of 2012, everything changed...

Prologue

Not so long ago, I was bestowed a moment of peace within my thought process that allowed me to reflect upon my day-to-day lifestyle. During the process of my reflection, I found my self able to relate life to laundry. In my case it is often a mixed load that tends to spin out of control. My colors will bleed and fade, garments may occasionally become tattered or even go missing, and the dry cycle can never seem to handle my weekly quantity of laundry. In the end however, my overall load of laundry comes out unscathed (minus a missing and/or holey sock); cleaner than it was before and smelling of fresh lavender.

My life is quite hectic, as many lives are. Whether it be work, money, education, romance, and/or friendship, all these aspects of my life tend to jumble themselves together to a point where knowing which way is up can be quite taxing on top of it all. Though I may sometimes find: myself out of a job; broke; losing sanity through my pursuit of knowledge; lost, and/or; alone, I've always gotten through it. By working through these hardships, I am able to achieve greater goals than I could have ever imagined as well as experience the greatest of moments. At the moment I have: an amazing job; a positive balance in my bank account; dean's list grades!!!; no comment, and: the most amazing friends in the world. I know my life will never be perfect, but I think I detect the scent of lavender.