No Dryer, No Peace!

Finally. I have a sign for the march this week.

"No Dryer, No Peace!"

Yes, it will confuse people. But the message will go to the heart of the true enemy: Sears Appliance Repair. They're gonna feel me. 

Two weeks. Two weeks without a working dryer. Five cancellations. Two actual visits where the dryer died, literally, hours after the technician left. Monies paid. Fourteen phone calls, eleven without my saying "fuck", and you know how much that had to take out of me. 

The phone conversations were very problematic. I had to ask everyone to repeat their names, sometimes twice and three times. Now, if you are a progressive liberal like I am who believes strongly in the words on the Statue of Liberty, it is very uncomfortable to have to ask a person with a heavy accent to repeat what they are saying. I really wish Emma Lazarus had added a clarification in The New Colossus:

Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses who clearly enunciate consonants yearning to breathe free

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore; send these - the homeless, tempest-tossed to me and please ask them to speak slowly. I raise my lamp and the volume of my phone beside the golden door.

I felt compelled to justify my liberal cred each time I asked someone to repeat their name.

"Um, I swear to God, you are welcome in this country and I will fight for immigration rights for you and your people. I went door-to-door with my mom in 1964 for California's Fair Housing Act and I can recite the words on the Statue of Liberty by heart; in fact, I can sing you the song with the lyrics that I learned in the Jewish Secular Progressive school my parents sent me to - yeah, I'm Jewish - so, really, you and I are the same because my grandparents were immigrants, just like you. And, believe me, talk about not being able to understand their English! Oh my God, my fucking God, my grandfather was all, "vait a meenoot, chust a secont, it's only tree-tirty in deh o'cloock". 

"But could you please spell out what you just told me because - and I am really sorry - I don't understand anything you are saying. Go Hillary!"

God. It is really hard to be a sensitive liberal.

And I still do not have a working dryer.

It is really hard to be a sensitive, globally-aware, entitlement-aware, Jewish-guiltridden, liberal who knows that much of the world doesn't even have a dryer and that people with accents are working harder than anyone to be understood and they are probably subjected to hearing all sorts of insults, and that all efforts truly need to be focussed on Trump and his flying monkeys and the asshole Republican Congresspeople who are dismantling democracy.

But.

We are out of towels.

And all I have left to wear after two weeks of snow and dogs and ice and no power and BBQing outside in the snow and soot are button-fly jeans. And if there is anything to make me feel like life is not worth living, it's wearing button-fly jeans when I am housebound. God. I am too fat to wear these. Right now, they are unbuttoned and held up by an old guitar strap because fuck me.

So, yeah.

Come Saturday, I am going to pull up my unbuttoned guitar-strap jeans and I will go to the march and I will hold up my "No Dryer, No Peace!" sign. And the world will rise to the level of kindness and justice for all, and we will have single payer health insurance and women's reproductive rights and PoC will never fear for their lives again and we will have equality for every single person in the universe.

Saturday!

Oh, shit. Wait.

Saturday. That's the day Sears said they can send a repairperson. I'm not leaving my house.

 

Comments

[Annie]

Thanks, I needed that laugh!

[Hawi Moore]

I love your blog

[Kelowna]

This was a very entertaining read thank you. And it's not what I was expecting when I read the title. It exceeded my expectations. I was looking for a funny story about kitchen appliance repair services but this was even better. Thank you for sharing!

[Dr. Strangemom]

Thank you, Hawi and Kelowna! It means a lot to me that you enjoy the blog!