A Laundry Story

First final exam of the term tomorrow! Yikes! Time to be done with virology forever - woohoo!! Just a short story about a laundry experience from tonight to tide you over.

I normally try to do laundry on Friday or Saturday evenings, as there tends to be less traffic because people are out partying, or just out and about not thinking about laundry. This weekend, that turned out not to happen because I put it off on Friday night, and then ran into troubles last night. Oops. When I got home from studying with a friend this evening, I decided to take a peek and see if by chance either of the washers was open. I lucked out! Stepping into the laundry room, it was completely silent. I did discover finished clothes in both washing machines, but since all the dryers were open, I had no qualms about kicking that person out. Snooze you lose, too bad buddy. I've done laundry in that room long enough to know that there are two types of laundry-doers: those who are hovering over the machines as they are finishing, and those who forget and leave their clothes for hours. This guy struck me as the latter. So I politely pulled all of the clothes out of one washer and stuck them in a dryer. I won't turn it on for people, because everyone has different settings they prefer, and sometimes clothes in the wash are not meant to be dried.

So while I am doing this, a guy pops his head in the room and then quickly disappears. The door is propped open, so I hear him say to someone, "no, it's a girl." Before I leave the laundry room, I always start the water running (so as to claim my machine). When I return my things, I find a guy peering into the currently occupied washing machine with rubber dissection gloves on. He grimaces, and starts pulling the clothes out and shoving them in the drier. As I am watching and trying not to laugh, he says that he's been waiting on this person for over an hour. I chuckle and say that I am not "nice" enough to do that anymore. Too often I have watched people leave things for hours, and I am on a time budget. He says yeah, and reluctantly admits that although he doesn't mind as much when it's a girls belongings, the thought of touching another guy's underwear just grosses him out. He's a med student by the way.

I can't decide. Is this normal? Am I the freak who doesn't mind touching other people's presumably clean clothes without protection? I think perhaps I just don't really care, because in vet med, I've touched and dealt with so many gross things all the time that touching reasonably clean (even if was just water!) guys clothes doesn't bother me a bit. I mean, it's not like I can't come back to my suite and wash my hands with soap! The part that bothers me about touching other people's clothes is my fear that they'll walk in on me in the process. How embarrassing!! Then I'd feel terrible and horribly guilty haha. But not grossed out. After all, doctors must certainly deal with worse on a day to day basis with their patients. And people diseases are much more likely to be transmissible when there is sickness involved!