On laundry and bookstores

You know what I love best about The Simpsons? The main story line always starts as the result of a random inciting incident. This is kinda like that. Kinda.

The inciting incident in this case is laundry. When we bought our house, we were excited that it came with one of those fancy schmancy washing machines that lets you hand wash clothes without actually having to wash them by hand. Technology, right? I’d had a pile of such clothes stashed in the corner of my closet for, I don’t know, months? So yesterday, I grabbed them and tossed them in the washer, turned it on and that was that.

Until I discovered that somehow this dress had made it into the pile.

I don’t know why I’m standing like that. That’s an old picture I dug out of my computer. But anyway, the point is that now most of the clothes looked like this.

MOTHEREFFER.

But then I discovered the wonders of Rit color remover on a friend’s suggestion, and you guys. It works. It totally works.

The trade-off to having sparkly white clothes again was that my kitchen REEKED like Rit dye. Those of you who were around in the 80s probably remember what it was like to get a perm. Here, check out this bat mitzvah photo I knicked off Facebook. It’s from circa 1990. I’m in the front row, second from the left. You know, the chick with the orange poodle perm styled into a triangle? Go ahead and laugh. I don’t blame you.

And Rit color remover smells EXACTLY like perm solution, times 112. Long story short, I had to get out of my house.

The original plan was to take my daughter to the library and spend the afternoon reading children’s books, but apparently every other citizen of my town had the same plan (it’s unclear whether Rit color remover was involved), so we wound up at Barnes & Noble. Normally it drives me crazy when people treat bookstores like libraries (Buy the books, dammit!), but, you know, desperate times and all.

I grabbed a handful of board books and set up shop in the Teen section. In between reading books to my kid in a hushed whisper and trying to keep them out of her mouth, I watched. And learned. Some findings, if I may.

1. 100% of visitors to the Teen section were female. Several teenaged boys entered the store, but every single one of them beelined right past the Teen section.

2. There weren’t a lot of browsers. Nearly everyone who came to the Teen section knew exactly what she wanted. Which leads me to …

3. VAMPIRES VAMPIRES VAMPIRES. Industry peeps might be sick of them, but teenaged girls sure as heck aren’t.

The end.

P.S. My kitchen still smells faintly of Rit dye.

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