Doing laundry in Harlem

Since we don't have laundry facilities in our apartment, on a biweekly basis, I load myself down with dirty clothes and head for a local laundromat. There are 2 choices within walking distance: Ms. Bubbles (aka the sketchy one) and Miss Bubbles (aka, the insane one). Don't ask me why Harlem can't get more creative with names; it's terribly confusing. Depending on how I feel on any given laundry day, I choose whether I want to subject myself to people who look suspiciously like drug dealers at Ms. Bubbles or 700 screaming Hispanic women and their wild children at Miss Bubbles. It's about a 50/50 split.

Yesterday, having had more than enough insanity for one day, I decided to brave the crackheads and camp out at Ms. Bubbles for a few hours. For the sake of the story, it is necessary to point out that I have recently learned how to knit, and have been ecstatically making gloriously misshapen messes out of yarn for about a week now. I'm terrible, but it's unfailingly amusing, so I keep at it. So there I am, sitting on the busted open window seat at the laundromat, knitting away on a hideous, hole-ridden, egg yolk yellow "scarf" (read: unidentifiable blob of yarn). 

At some point, the door slams open, and a crowd of elementary aged children come bursting in. They settle in a few feet away from me and start doing whatever it is that children do in laundromats (it seems to involve a lot of shrieking and running around). I don't pay them much attention until, out of the blue, one of them turns to me and says: "You know how to knit!?"

"Uh, well, yeah..." I respond, confused, since that's rather obviously what I'm doing. As if some invisible switch has been flipped, all the kids stop shouting and turn to me with awestruck expressions on their faces. They all come running over to where I'm sitting, snatch the yellow blob out of my hands, and pass it around, exclaiming loudly in admiration. It comes to the hands of a petite African American girl, who can't be more than 9. She cocks her head, puts her hands on her hips, stares me straight in the eye, and says: "How much?" 

"Uh....what?" I stammer in disbelief. "How much you want for this? ...What is it, anyway?" It is all I can do not to burst out laughing. For the past few days, I've been agonizing over what I'll do with this hideous scarf once it's finished: I certainly don't want it, nor does anyone I know. I had been planning on giving it to a random homeless person. The idea that anyone would want to buy it hadn't occurred to me in my wildest dreams, and yet that was indeed what was being proposed.

"I'll tell you what," I say, "How often are y'all here?"A tiny boy, who asks to be called "Man-Man" pipes up: "We here ALL the time. When we're not dancing to raise money, that is." I decide to ignore the implications of this remark. "All right, I'll make you a deal. When I'm finished with this scarf, I'll bring it over and give it to you for free." All five children start shouting at once, arguing over who will be the recipient of this unexpected treasure. It's eventually decided that the scarf will go to Deja, the original would-be buyer. 

"But I don't want it any longer!" she protests. "Can't I have it now?" The scarf is, at present, about 8 inches long. "What are you going to do with a scarf this short?" I ask. The knitting is, once again, snatched out of my hands, as Deja and her friends demonstrate various uses for an 8-inch long blob of yarn, most of which involve stuffing it down their shirts. I concede, and summon my laundry buddy, Rachel (conveniently the one who taught me how to knit), who's been camped out on the other side of the room and has missed this whole spectacle, to show me how to cast off. 

Upon discovering that there are, not one, but two knitters on the premises, the children's joy quadruples. "Can y'all teach us!?!?!?" Michelle says, and the others chorus their enthusiasm. After a good deal of hashing out logistics, Rachel, who is one of the most kind-hearted people I have ever met, agrees to meet them at Ms. Bubbles the next day to conduct a knitting lesson. 

As it is, the planning is cut short when the matron of Ms. Bubbles, a harried looking women wielding a broom, comes bursting in, and starts chasing the children out while shouting incomprehensibly in Spanish. 

And this, friends, is proof that even something as mundane as doing laundry is an adventurous experience in Harlem. Never a dull moment. Never a mundane experience.