Dirty Laundry

People love it when you lose,
They love dirty laundry

~Don Henley

                                                 

“You’re really going to do your laundry at Davyd’s house? He might see your dainties!”

I mean really. My friend K and her husband L were coming over for a small dinner party after the graduation. She and I once taught together, before my moves, so her fellow teachers knew me. Apparently the tongue-wagger with the dirty mind missed the part about coming over for dinner with her husband; my wife was likely to attend said dinner, you would think. But the questioner’s mind went down a different path. No good deed goes unpunished.

K  was running her laundry before heading off to the afternoon ceremony and the evening dinner at my house. When changing the first load out of the dryer, K felt the damp glop that meant only one thing: the dryer had crapped out. Faced with a tight timeframe and a second wet load in the washer, K gave me a quick call; she was relieved that my dryer was in good working condition, ready to serve her laundry needs later while we enjoyed tri tip, shrimp and grilled veggies. The clothes would be dry by the time I finished warmin up Gizdich Ranch’s signature Olalliberry pie.

This rather mundane tale is a vehicle to mention the fun of a small party. Add a little domestic trifle to a few glasses of wine and  see what happens. It helps that the other couple hadn’t seen use in forever, and the two sets of guests were only slightly if happily acquainted. A lively mix of shared experience, varied backgrounds, overlapping histories and more wine meant giggles and outright laughter faster than you could say “a little potbelly port with that dessert?"

The silliness of that laundry comment led to some more dirty laundry stories and some more "dirty laundry" got aired--mostly retread tales of of our children's run-ins with radar guns. Our moral

“Scandal is gossip made tedious by morality.”

― Oscar Wilde, Lady Windermere's Fan

outrage, tempered with time, becomes humourous. But when a recent speeding ticket is mentioned, we squirm. "Too soon?" Yes, if the fine is yet pending, it is not yet grist for the mill...did I just hear the timer on the dryer go off, or was it the pie? Food cures all.