I knew I should've replaced that duct tape!

[cosmolinguist]

I just heard this loud banging coming from the other end of the house, but it didn't last too long and so it was over before I realized what it was. But I did recognize it; I've heard it a few times this week. Oh, I thought, that must mean the washing machine is running but the dryer's not!

I was right.

Impressed at my Sherlockian ability to detect the state of appliances from such a distance? Elementary, my dears.

You see, the door on the front of the dryer broke a while ago, so instead of opening only to a position wherein it's parallel with the floor, it drops down past that--not quite to the floor, but past the normal limit of its hinges. Then it broke more so besides this, it also wouldn't stay closed. And the dryer, like my Discman, will not run if it's not properly closed in the first place. So my parents got a big stick--not a branch kind of stick, a dowel kind of stick, big and heavy and a couple feet long--and when you want to use the dryer, you brace once end under the lip of the handle on the dryer lid, and the other end where the opposite wall of the laundry room meets the floor. (In this respect, it's a good thing that it's a skinny room.)

One gets used to things like hearing the dryer's buzzer go off, wandering into the laundry room, nonchalantly whacking the stick and letting the dryer fall open, careful to keep toes out of its way, and pulling clothes out of the dryer.

But when the dryer's not being used, there's no reason to be so careful about the dryer door...yet one does not want it hanging open all the time, as that's about as inconvenient as the stick as far as getting to the other side of the room is concerned. (In this respect, it's a bad thing that it's a skinny room.) Plus, it's just silly.

Though the solution might be just as silly... One of my parents put two pieces of duct tape at the top of the door to stick it to the dryer and hold it shut--more or less shut, close enough for government work. Close enough, that is, unless the washer's running. If the washer and dryer are both running, the stick will be there and it's no problem. But if the dryer's not running, only the duct tape (which is losing its adhesivity as it gets unstuck and re-stuck to the dryer more and more often) is holding it closed, and the shaking motion of the washer might make it peel off and thus the dryer door will fall open on its broken hinges and bounce up and down a little bit with the momentum, thus producing the distinctive banging noise I heard.

Comments

[kalieris.livejournal.com]

That's hysterical. I would ask why not fix or replace the dryer, but I know the answer to that question. (Says the woman whose driver's side mirror is duct-taped to the car.)

H

[davmoo.livejournal.com]

Now I feel better about having the passenger side mirror taped to the side of my car.

[cosmolinguist]

Exactly.

Though my mom actually said that once school's out (for her, she works at the school her kids used to go to) she's going to look into getting a new one. Maybe even a new washer! Though I remember her replacing the washing machine, maybe ten or so years ago, she told me today that she's never had a new dryer; this is the one her parents bought her when she and my dad got their house in Cedar Rapids (the first time they'd not lived in an apartment), which would've been almost thirty years ago now that I think about it. And a month or two of duct tape after that long isn't too shabby, I think. :-)

[dracole.livejournal.com]

WOW, must actually be a pretty good dryer to last so long. And, the only problem is the door? Yeah, not too shaby at all. :)

[karaksindru.livejournal.com]

Brilliant deduction, Holmes!

Also, sorry for not paying much attention while we were on the phone ... if it helps, I was reading this during the moments of silence before you hung up.

Hope you slept well *hugs*

[cosmolinguist]

Don't worry about it; I didn't. :-)

And I did sleep well. My parents didn't make me get up after all, so I slept until 9:30, which is almost as late as you'll get to sleep today! :-D

[davmoo.livejournal.com]

Remember the motto of nerds everywhere...

If you can't fix it with duct tape, it can't be fixed.

[cosmolinguist]

The duct tape and the big stick make me think it sounds like the beginning of a Red Green sketch...though surely in that case the dryer would not be used for drying clothes but for some more silly and inadvisable purpose...

[dracole.livejournal.com]

Like drying the cat, or baking bread, ooh, ohh, or mixing cement?

[cosmolinguist]

Exactly. Those are the sorts of things I would've loved to use for examples, had I been more awake when I wrote that comment. Thanks for providing some. :-)

[stealthmunchkin.livejournal.com]

I miss you, very very much, and love you dearly

[photomoviegeek.livejournal.com]

Do your parents have a working TV stacked atop a non-working console-style TV? (from Joe Foxworthy's "You might be a redneck...").

[cosmolinguist]

Do we sound that much like hicks? :-)

Besides, I know where you live. If I'm a hick, so are you. :-D

[photomoviegeek.livejournal.com]

yes, it was just the image of stick & duct tape that conjured up thoughts of the Deep South (namely Olkahoma & Georgia). The solution was clever in either a) a redneck kinda way or b) a Red Green kinda way, as someone else pointed out.

[stealthmunchkin.livejournal.com]

Thought you might appreciate this from Gaiman's blog - seems like people called Holly think in much the same way...

"This evening I had a very pleasant time with Holly, which began with her mentioning how much she liked the song "Across the Universe" and me playing her the version of the song by Laibach, which has always been my favourite. "Dad," she said, happily, "This was the version of the song I knew as a little girl. I always wondered why the Beatles one sounded different from the way I expected. I mean you could understand the words for a start." Then we sat in front of the computer for a few hours and I made her a playlist of songs she had loved as a small girl, the ones she'd remembered and the ones she'd forgotten, which led to our having The Conversation. You know, the one I've known was coming for the last almost-nineteen years.

I dragged songs from her childhood over to the playlist -- "Barcelona" and "Nothing Compares 2 U" and "I Don't Like Mondays" and "These Foolish Things" and then came Lou Reed's "Walk on the Wild Side". "You named me from this song, didn't you?" said Holly as the first bass notes sang. "Yup," I said.

Lou started singing.

Holly listened to the first verse, and for the first time, actually heard the words.

"Shaved her legs and then he was a she...? He?"

"That's right," I said, and bit the bullet. We were having The Conversation. "You were named after a drag queen in a Lou Reed song."

She grinned like a light going on. "Oh dad. I do love you," she said. Then she picked up an envelope and wrote what I'd just said down on the back of it, in case she forgot it.

I'm not sure that I'd ever expected The Conversation to go quite like that."

[cosmolinguist]

My dad likes that song--at least in that way that you like things you hear on the radio but don't pay attention to otherwise.

Still, it'd be cool to be named after that song. :-)

My mom chose the name, though, and even all the people who think I have it because I was born so close to Christmas are wrong; apparently she always wanted to name a daughter Holly.

My dad has been known to tell me I'm named after Buddy Holly, though. I like that better. :-)

[stealthmunchkin.livejournal.com]

Oh, and join toxicpenguins and let me know what other interests to add...