“Revenge Of The Clothes Dryer”

Last year our washing machine stopped working. It was about fifteen years old. Our dryer, about the same age, had it’s drive belt replaced but still worked. When my wife replaced the washing machine she decided to upgrade the dryer as well.

I was not happy about it. I like to keep things until they no longer work and so I was content with the old dryer even if it meant “mismatched appliances”. I let my wife AND the new dryer know how I felt about it too…….

The new dryer, for all intents and purposes, works great. But, I think it knows that I did not choose to buy it. How do I know this? You see, every now and then it will change its’ settings unbeknownst to me and my clothes won’t dry completely, causing me to have to dry them again. And sometimes it will not signal me when the cycle is done and I forget to get my clothes. Then my family yells at me for leaving my clothes when they go to use the dryer.

These things pale in comparison to what it did to me lately. It shrank my favorite sweater. Then it shrank my favorite pair of jeans. A few weeks back I put on my favorite sweater and it was much tighter than I remembered. Daggone dryer shrank it! Then last week I put on my most comfortable pair of jeans and, shockingly, could not button them! MAN THAT DRYER! So, I went and bought a sweater and jeans the same size as the ones that shrank. To my astonishment they did not fit either. Too small…. How could the dryer do this? My new clothes had never been in there. I sat down and gathered my thoughts. I began to wonder. Could it be? Am I really starting to “spread in the mid section”. The thought truly never crossed my mind. I have worn the same size clothes for thirty years. Now I realized why at my last doctor’s visit he and the nurse smirked and giggled when I asked, in all seriousness, if they could tell me why my medication was making my stomach feel “tight”.

I apologized to the dryer and now I accept my wife’s decision to upgrade and have a matched pair. I just wish it could stretch your clothes instead of shrinking them.