Lint

I've often wondered: if I fell down the laundry chute one day while emptying out the hamper and got stuck half way down, would Nigel hear my screams for help and somehow either be able to rouse my neighbor or dial 9-1-1? Today I got the answer to that question.

He wouldn't. Dragon Tales is just too darn interesting. He might move a little closer to the TV...might turn up the volume, even, to drown out that annoying yelling noise coming from the bathroom, but he wouldn't--HE WOULDN'T--come to help. He wouldn't even turn around to look and laugh.

I didn't have to fall down the laundry chute to find this out. I wedged myself into the tight corner. No accident.

To start at the beginning, I must explain that Tom feels called to the law, called to fatherhood, and called to Young Men. He feels obligated to the yard, responsible for the cars, committed to barbecue duty when friends come over. But he does NOT realize that all men everywhere are required to do the fix-it jobs, and I have accepted this. Hey, he calls the cable company and chews them out every time they try to raise our cable rate. He deals with customer service at the cell phone company. So I gladly, CHEERFULLY, (ineptly, as you will see) pulled out the dryer this morning to set about changing the dryer vent hose.

We had one of those old plastic hoses that my Home Handyman magazine calls a fire hazard. It makes three hairpin bends (though Home Handyman advises it not to do so), the last of which leads to a fifteen foot vent pipe that would probably make Home Handyman write us off entirely. No professional will now clean out dryer vents of any kind (see Tom, calling to the law of, above), and especially not fifteen foot ones connected to well-bent flamable hose. I have been scratching my head over what to do about the situation as my drying times gradually increased from 50 minutes a load to an hour and thirty minutes. But finally I concluded that I could at least change the hose and clean out the parts of the vent pipe I could reach.

So it was that I found myself jammed into a vertical plane between the wall of the laundry room and the washer and dryer, my cheek smashed up against the back of the washer, my arms and legs bent out at weird angles like an egyptian stick figure, trying to turn the screw of the hose clamp with my left hand. Each ten tries would produce several swear words, plenty of sweat, an agony of frustration, and about a quarter of a turn. Doing such a simple job under an almost impossible physical situation causes extreme mental stress. Would it be better or worse if the fate of the world hung in the balance?

I did ultimately finish the job. It took me an hour and a half, and all the self-will I posess. Nigel never came to fetch tools that I dropped. The vent hose, by the way, was full--FULL--of lint. Completely filled. To the top. It also had a few interesting objects that had somehow sneaked through the holes in the dryer drum, including a miniature pair of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles nunchucks that Tim lost about two years ago and looked for for a solid month. I didn't give them back to him. Too much pain when he loses them again.