There is an unspoken rule that when you are doing laundry in a public laundry doing-type space, and you are waiting for someone else's load in the dryer to be complete so that you may move your wet clothes, you must wait, at the very least, until their minutes are up. And then, I think, there's a two minute grace period for the owner of the clothes in the dryer to arrive, but I'm kind of radical. (Not everyone agrees with me on that. That's cool. I understand. We are all so terribly busy.)

But at least you should wait until the minutes have run out on the dryer. That I think is a commonly held belief.

So the other day this bitch on my floor pulled out my clothes from the dryer a full six minutes before it was over. She was caught in the act; half of my clothes were still in the dryer. Then she said, "Oh, there was only a minute left on it anyway." I pulled off the clothes from the top of the dryer. There were six minutes remaining on the timer. I didn't say a word. She got all nervous then and said, "They're all dry, see?" She patted the clothes.

And then I said, "No, that's fine. You're the one who has to wake up every day knowing you're a liar. It must hurt to look in the mirror."

No, of course I didn't say that.

I did refuse to talk to her even though she started making small talk with me. She actually asked me how long I put my clothes in the dryer, trying to engage my expertise. As if everyone on the planet doesn't know it could be anywhere from forty to fifty minutes.

As if this were the first time she had done laundry in her entire life, and she didn't know the fucking rules.

I shoved my clothes in my bag as fast I could.

"There you go," I said. "All ready for you."

If my passive-aggressive bitchy behavior can help out some other innocent laundry-doer in the future, it will have been worth it.

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