There's nothing like the reality check of going to your local laundromat.If you're like me, from time to time an unusual washing need or some other Murphy's Law-type situation precipitates the need to patronize this, should I say, iconic phenomenon that is the washeteria. Now THAT is life in STEREO-- unattended, screaming toddlers... the Jerry Springer Show in the background, and the droning sounds of 40 dissonant dryers.
That Laundromat Ethos-- one of the few remaining outposts of genuine American society, is a case study for rugged individualism and a "come-as-you-are" culture.
Meanwhile, outside the laundromat-induced ethos, most other places in society spend disproportionate amounts of time in a shrewd form of image management. You know-- instead of the Washeteria WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) Mentality, most people in our society work overtime manipulating and veiling the reality of who they are-- and what their lives are actually like. That's true even (if not especially) in American Churchianity (which, itself, is another post for another day).
Meaning [in everyday society] instead of people knowing one another at near-face value, it's as if the average person's Public Image is more of a construct-- a facade that has been carefully built by pushing perceptions of perfection, as we possibly sought to delude ourselves and others about the reality of our human brokenness... or the fact that we live in a fractured world whose brokenness affects us with all-too frequent regularity.
But like I said, not so at your local washeteria. It's a wild and wooly experience everytime one has occasion to go (second only to Wal-Mart). People are there from all walks of life: the almost homeless guy; the co-habitation crowd; the bachelor-stag dude; the college crowd; the single mom; the middle-class-middle-aged divorcee; extras from the set of 'Deliverance', and left-over relics of the goth and grunge eras.
But the cool thing is that-- it's weirdness notwithstanding-- at least there's no pretension there. After all, it's impossible to bust a pose when you're toting around a broken, pink-plastic laundry-basket full of soiled clothing, bent metal hangers, and a formerly-wet-now-dried-but-still-clumpy generic brand of detergent.
Now, one could suggest that laundr-o-mats (it's fun to hyphenate it) are statistically-disproportionate with dysfuntional people, but I may counter-argue that their populous represents a legitimate sample or cross-section of society, only with its unveiled and unretouched idiosyncrasies.
Truth be told, I feel "at home" and "uncomfortable" in both places: The real world and your average laundromat. But the laundromat is at least a nice break from society's fishbowl of expectations and scrutiny if, for no other reason, than the fact that nobody "looks for you" or expects to see you there. I guess that's why I don't mind going every now and then. Like today, of all times, on Labor Day. (Don't ask).
The moral of the story? Well, this is probably more freelance rambling than anything-- my "bored-while-waiting-for-my-stuff-to-dry" observation of the sociological nature of a particular place that I seldom frequent-- but I guess there is a take away to chew on: It's that there's something precious about going to a place where we see others and they see us as we really are-- unshaven, unguarded, unpretentious, and unashamed: viz., "Just as I am."
Life would great if we had a balance of those two: The Laundromat Ethos of Authenticity and a Prudent Posturing of the Populist Public. Then we'd have just the right amount of appropriate discretion and of honest self-disclosure.
