The game of “Would You Rather”: laundry edition!

Alternate title: This is totally worse than the time my grandfather found a little baby octopus in his half-eaten can of tuna.

J and I decided long ago that we would allow ourselves the “luxury” of sending out our laundry rather than doing it ourselves. Before you write me off as some bonbon-eating layabout, you should know that we both work full-time, and our building does not allow washing machines in individual apartments. And so basically, our options were:

(A) spending half of our Sundays fighting with the crazy old bats who commandeer the machines in our laundry room, INCLUDING THE ONE WHO FILED A FORMAL COMPLAINT THAT SOMEONE CAME TO HER APARTMENT AND REMOVED HER BRA WHILE SHE SLEPT AND I WISH I WAS KIDDING BUT LO, I AM NOT;

(B) Engaging in some wacky Three’s Company-style hijinks to secretly smuggle in a mini-washer/dryer, which would undoubtedly flood the building and then we'd need to live in our parking garage space, and we'd end up on the Tyra Banks Show because she'd have decided that she was going to do another one of her hard-hitting "investigative journalism" pieces where she puts on a bandana, ripped jeans, and smudged eyeshadow on her face to pretend she's homeless; or

(C) Sacking up and shelling out triple the cash to have someone else do the job, and return the clothes to us all fresh-smelling and neatly folded and SHUT UP IT IS TOTALLY WORTH IT.

Honestly, we’ve been doing this so long that I kind of…forget that, you know, ours isn’t the only laundry that the service does.

I was reminded of it a few summers ago, when I pulled these bad boys out of the laundry bag, and was scarred forever.



Partially because of the, you know, strange granny panties mixed in with my clothes, but also because it meant that the laundress (I am bringing that word back) apparently thought that these just seemed like they suited me. I mean, she’s SEEN the rest of my clothes, you know? I don’t own pleat-front pants, or mom jeans, or a denim vest with floral appliqué. I was deeply saddened by her insinuation.

Since that time, we’ve only had an errant itchy wool or turquoise-spangled sock here and there in our laundry. I’d honestly pretty much forgotten all about the drama of the granny panties.

UNTIL NOW.

Today, I found this in our laundry.

I inspected the raggedy thong, and informed J that we had once again been visited by the Strange Laundry Fairy. He was all, “how do you know they’re not yours?” And while the question was valid, I handily answered his question by informing him that:

A) My butt—being larger than a Bratz doll’s—would never have fit into them.

B) If I had purchased the teeny tiny doll-sized panties in a fit of delusion, I’d certainly have tossed them by this point, given their current dilapidated state; and

C) Perhaps most importantly, my name is not Lupe. Even if it WAS, however, I would not—as Lupe did—write the name “Lupe” on the tag of my underwear in permanent marker because I am not 14 and at sleep-away camp.

The real question here, obviously, is which would you prefer mixed in with YOUR laundry?

My god, this is like some sort of amazing personality profile assessment come to life. (Granted, I have no idea what your choice would say about you, but still! I have one whole semester of Cognitive Psych--from nearly 10 years ago-- under my belt, so I’m prettttty sure I can figure it all out.) I mean, in the game of Mystery Unmentionables (which, by the way, is going to be the next single off my album), if you had to choose one, would you rather find Aggressively TALL Floral Granny panties, owner unknown, OR the tattered G-string worn to shreds by Lupe the Underwear Personalizing, Tiny-Butted Lady ?

Having experienced both, I'm still not sure of an answer, but whatever.

I'm cueing the Jeopardy music as we speak, people!