My Own Private Seinfeld
You might think that the hardest thing about living in NYC are the rats scurrying past our trash cans
Having a single drawer in our kitchen
Or living in a second floor walk up with no elevator.
However, those things are character-making idiosyncrasies compared to the drama and hassle of doing laundry EVERY SINGLE WEEK. See, we don’t have a washer and dryer in our unit or in our building, so we’re forced to drag our bag(s) of laundry to a laundromat 2 blocks away. That sucks in itself; nothing feels more like losing your grown-up card than being forced to sort your underwear in a poorly-lit basement, condemned to watch your clothes spin for the 25 minute cycle that really lasts 40 and feeling like a kid in college.
But then I met my nemesis. “No fold!” the owner yelled at me on our first few visits as I tried to put our clothes out on one of the 10 folding spots. I’m not aggressive, but I am assertive, “Where should I go then?” I asked. He yelled at one of his employees and then pointed me to a corner. Fine. On the next visit he yelled, “No dry!” Again, I asked, “Which dryer do you want me to use?” After staring at the clothes spinning round, he points to a dryer and yelled, “here!” We did this dance on almost every one of my visits for the first couple months, I’d get yelled at for trying to um, do my laundry, and I would yell back,” Okay, what do you want me to do?!” He’s got the rigidity of the Soup Nazi, the intensity of Kramer and he’s the Newman to my Jerry.
I think what he’d rather have me do is drop off my laundry and pay these rates, which I sometimes do, especially on Towel Day, but it’s hard for me to embrace this part of being a New Yorker.
Maybe “Newman” is a test of how well I’ll stand up in this city and what I’m willing to endure. To be honest, our interactions provide more amusement than anger. A month or two after we had been going to his laundromat I saw “Newman” on the sidewalk and he nodded at me. It was the laundromat equivalent of getting a hug from a friend, and it made my day! Even Andy* commented on it, and we decided that we’ve been accepted in some way as New Yorkers. Maybe not natives, but at least locals, which I’m happy to embrace.
*For some reason Andy doesn’t bear “Newman’s” wrath and he ignores Andy’s multiple laundry indiscretions.