An ode to the laundry room

Oh, laundry room:

Where the good inhabitants of your apartment building meet to socialize and engage in friendly banter; where strangers' eyes meet in brief moments of forbidden desire or unabashed disgust; where the intelligentsia gather to plot their next reality-altering scheme (such as keeping the laundry closed on Sundays and thus making sure nobody can do their laundry on the only day they have the time to do so); where the janitor's notice board is constantly covered in a glorious mix of complaints, questions and nonsensical, semi-poetic dabblings.

Where quiet battles are fought over who booked the dryer first or stole someone's bleach;
where little old ladies will gently persuade you into letting them have the washing machine for
another 30 minutes (and nobody says no because it would be like saying no to your own
grandmother), thereby nudging the already rickety booking schedule into a magnificent
collapse; where socks disappear into thin air, only to manifest themselves four months later
in a tattered, washed out state after having been stuck in the dark realms of the leftmost
washing machine where not even the keenest of eyes could see them, or strongest of hands pry them free from their ever-rotating iron cell; where the principle of "love thy neighbour" is put to the test every day as you find your clothes strewn all over the usually less then squeaky clean laundry room floor.

Where creatures big and small - of both the human and non-human kind - roam freely among the comforting warmth emitted from the large electrical mammoths that leave our laundry in a state of variable decontamination; where the strong, concrete walls block all cell phone reception and leave you blissful isolation from the brouhaha of the outside world (and prevents your mum calling you and nagging about that thing you were supposed to pick up somewhere).

Oh, laundry room - my life revolves around thy existence and thy etheric booking system!
Oh, laundry room - may thy electricity never be absent, thus leaving my clothes wet and full of detergent!


(I really, really need to get my own washing machine.)