Unshelved by Bill Barnes and Gene Ambaum
comic strip overdue media

Tuesday, April 27, 2004

I wonder

feeling: Mellow and a tiny bit guilty

When I was a kid, I used to stretch out on my bed and look at the ceiling, at how to doorways looked upside-down, and I wondered what it would be like to live in a world where everything was built like that, with the furniture on the ceiling and the floor having spackling and where you'd have to step over the threshold, literally. Today, on my way to put my clothes in the dryer, as a cold wind blew big fluffy clouds above me in a rich blue sky, I was suddenly struck with the same idea, but this time the 'what-if' involved someone standing on one of those fluffy cloud-bottoms looking up at this great, moving patchwork of a 'sky' with mountains stretching down, breaking up the seemingly endless sea. I also wondered how different it would be to be on a white, grey, or reflective cloud. Would you be blinded by a silver lining?

Then I decided that my blood sugar was a bit wonky and that I still hadn't eaten that 'bite' I'd intended.

Oh, and the guilt? I was about to put the last load into the dryer when a guy came in with a couple of pair of jeans looking not for a washer, but for a dryer, and asking the, 'oh, were you going to use this?' as if it weren't obvious. Still, rather than suggest he go to one of the other laundy roomd, I offered to consolidate my loads so he could have the last dryer (there are only four of each machine in that laundry room). Altruistic? Well, not exactly. I'd already cleaned out the lint and one of them had very little. There's one dryer that sometimes doesn't really dry well, and I can never remember which one...but from the lint, it would be the one I gave him. I don't know that for a fact, but I suspect. Now, granted, for two pairs of jeans vs. a full load of clothes, it'll probably do fine for him...but I felt just a little evil.

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