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Ten minutes into a drying cycle the other day, I heard this abrasive metal-tinged clank. You know how that is. Your mind instantly comes to attention.
Lipstick? Did I leave a lipstick in a pocket?
Car keys?
Quarters? Change?
Lighter?
Divot repair tool?
Straight razor?
(That last one was to see if you’re awake).
So of course I stopped the drying cycle immediately and took out the offending object responsible for the noise. Thank goodness I use dryer balls.
(If you believe that one, you don’t know me very well. Of course I didn’t stop the drying cycle and investigate. And of course I don’t use dryer balls. Just the phrase makes me think of ten dirty jokes. This is ME we’re talking about).
First I ignored it. Then I blew it off. Then I promptly forgot about it, until I returned home from a meeting and heard an ominous Thunk Thunk Thunk coming from the laundry room.
The thunk was unseemly. The load was on gentle wash, and was filled with my delicate undergarments, nightgowns and buttery-soft workout leggings. There should have been no thunk. None.
When I opened the dryer door I saw that the thunk I had been hearing was the dryer vent, loose and unattached. I had left a wire dry-cleaning hanger in my hamper to get recycled downstairs, but I had forgotten to remove it, and it had somehow gotten tossed into the wash load. That was the metallic clink I had initially ignored.
Once the washing machine had disintegrated the paper cover and foam over the hanger, the dryer went to work on the metal. It melted it, and then small pieces of metal became embedded in the dryer vent, eventually prying the dryer vent out of its enclosure. The dryer vent then tossed around with the laundry, for hours, making that dull thunk.
And as our dryer vent has one sharp corner, that corner grabbed then snagged then twisted into oblivion three or four of my garments, and turned them over and over and over until it was one big gnarly twisted skein of horror.
It took me ten minutes to disentangle the Skein of Horror. My favorite nightgown, one workout tank and two pair of underwear suffered untimely deaths at the hands of my ignorance and one sharp-cornered dryer vent.
(Wait, why is it called a pair of underwear? A pair means two. Is it because panties have two leg holes? I’ll have to investigate this).
Anyway, ignore thunks at your own peril.