Washing the dirt away
So I was washing shoes. Heather had expressed some concern. Are you allowed to wash sneakers at the laundromat?
“Of course you can,” I said.
But the seed of doubt had been planted.
So when I was moving the sneakers from the washer to the dryer, I found myself doing it furtively. Avoiding eye contact. Rushing.
Just as I was putting the last shoe into the dryer, the man next to me said, “excuse me.”
I played deaf.
“Excuse me? Sir?” he said louder.
I turned to face him. “Yes?” I said, a defensive tone creeping through.
“I’m done with this dryer and there’s 10 minutes left on it,” he said, motioning to a dryer next to him.
It took a moment for it to sink in.
“Oh,” I said. “Oh! How nice! Thank you!”
I smiled and moved my shoes to his dryer, hit the LOW TEMP button, and thanked him again.
After a week of bad days, in a world where there’s so much random hostility from all sides, it was nice to be reminded that strangers can intermittently kind as well.