A Las Vegas taxi driver explains why he still enjoys doing laundry

Last weekend, a passenger in a Las Vegas taxi thanked the divine for possessing a washer and dryer in her small suburban tract house. She hoped she would never again enter a laundromat. Her friend in the back seat and the taxi driver both disagreed. They confessed a fondness for the facilities, despite having the money to buy private machines.

The passenger described the best part of buying her house as knowing she would never stand around a room filled with machines again. She worried about bringing enough quarters to wash and dry everything. Her friend, who lives in another state, has a washer and dryer but rarely uses them. A small fire started when her dryer short-circuited years ago. Instead of calling an electrician, she stopped using the appliance because she could not afford to fix it, though she actually could.

She enjoys the atmosphere of a room filled with students, fast-food workers, and apartment dwellers. She likes the strong smell of detergent and the act of muscling people aside to protect her space. Her preferred laundromat also operates as a bar, allowing customers to drink margaritas while waiting. She also belongs to a private membership dog park that features a bar and a social hour.

The passenger compared these modern spaces to a 1994 episode of the sitcom “Friends.” In that scene, Ross takes his crush Rachel to a Manhattan laundromat to teach her how to use it. Rachel, a wealthy woman from Long Island, had never washed clothes in her life. Ross teaches her to separate whites from colors and to deal with pushy New Yorkers trying to steal machines.

That scenario matched the passenger’s college memories, though not in New York. She hated the experience so much that she bought new underwear instead of washing the 87 pairs she already owned. By the end of her college years, she possessed 60 pounds of unwashed undies. She now knows how to wash them in a sink and hang them to dry because she travels frequently.

During trips, she usually drops laundry at a local service for a cheap price. The clothes come back clean, folded, and in neat bags. She trusts hotel laundry services less because they cost more. Last year, she stayed in an apartment hotel in Madrid with a washer-dryer combo in the kitchen. Her friend figured out the washer, but they never learned to use the dryer. They hung everything from the balcony.

The passenger only brings enough clothing for five days on any trip. She knows she will find a place to wash them. On a safari in Kenya, local Masai ladies cleaned her clothes. The items were stiff because they were pounded on a rock and dried in the sun, but they were clean. To the passenger, laundromats were part of the college experience, similar to drinking too much beer from red Solo cups at fraternity parties and forgetting how to get back to her dorm.

The column ends with an invitation for readers to submit an ending to the story via email. The author thanks the readers for their attention.