24-Hour Cycle
buried their eyes in their clothes
N.R. Kleinfield (thanks, Scott): At the laundromat, irregular things happen. People square off over washers — mine; no, mine. They sit on the counters where you were planning to fold T-shirts. Women conveniently forget a negligee in a dryer so you’ll find it and marry them. Street people try to sell utterly unnecessary things. Pesky process servers visit bearing summonses. People stare without mercy.
Charles Johnson has a 10-second rule. Mr. Johnson is 44, an occasional personal trainer with loose hours, and was juggling three loads one Wednesday afternoon at the Clean Rite Center in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn. He insists on doing the wash for his family (wife, two kids) “because I do it better, not because I have to.”
He does the cleaning too. In eight years, he said his wife has touched a mop perhaps twice. She cooks.
“In a laundromat you get a lot of eye drama,” he said. “That’s when someone may or may not like you and they look at you and you look at them and then you try not to look at them. So my rule is if you stare at me more than 10 seconds, I’ll talk to you and find out why you’re staring at me.”